Review: The Magnificent Seven

A village of poor Mexican farmers and their families is constantly raided for what little they have by bandits led by the cruel Calvera (Eli Wallach). Wanting to fight back but not feeling capable of doing so themselves, the villagers send out for hired gunmen to do their bidding. They don’t have a lot to offer, but it’s all they have. First cab off the rank is Chris (Yul Brynner) who despite the black hat, is a gunfighter with a conscience, who can see that these villagers are in dire need of help. He soon recruits his new friend Vin (Steve McQueen), and eventually they are joined by Chris’ gold-seeking pal Harry Luck (Brad Dexter), moody professional gunslinger Lee (Robert Vaughn), expert knife-thrower and gunman Britt (James Coburn), and Bernardo (Charles Bronson) a man who initially baulks at the meagre pay but proves to be noble and even paternal towards the younger members of the village. Rounding the seven out is temperamental young upstart Chico (Horst Buchholz) who thinks himself a gunfighter, but Chris isn’t quite so convinced of his worth just yet. That’s steely-eyed Robert J. Wilke being made a fool by Britt, and look out for Kurt Russell’s dad Bing alongside character actors Val Avery and Whit Bissell in the opening scenes.

My favourite western and one of cinema’s greatest entertainments this 1960 John Sturges (the even better all-star effort “The Great Escape” as well as the entertaining western “Gunfight at the OK Corral” and the terrific “Bad Day at Black Rock”) movie is for me an even greater film than its originator, Akira Kurosawa’s “The Seven Samurai”. I liked that film, but for me the characters and performances pop far more in this than in that critical favourite. It’s not perfect, but it sure is perfect entertainment as Sturges really knew how to give an audience what they want.

One of the biggest improvements over “The Seven Samurai” is the emphasis given to the villain of the piece. Before they were just a group of fairly faceless warriors, but here changed to Mexican bandits they are given a strong leader in Eli Wallach’s Calvera. Wallach doesn’t appear all that often in the film, but when he does he makes his moments count. He’s not the biggest physical threat, but Calvera doesn’t need to be. This is a guy who has picked on some pretty low hanging fruit here and runs roughshod over the poor villagers. It’s a position he very much likes, but in any other town he might get a little more resistance. When the villagers do complain, Calvera remarks ‘People are no longer content with their station in life’, which says it all. He’s no top-level heavy, he’s closer to the western movie equivalent of a schoolyard bully stealing your lunch money ‘coz he can. Then you call in your big brother to fuck the little punk up. In this case, the role of your big brother is played by seven gunslingers (though even then they’re outmanned by Calvera’s 40 strong army. Analogies aren’t really my thing. I tried, people). At any rate, Wallach’s Calvera is both funny and awful, and he kills someone within the first five minutes. Yeah, this guy deserves a bullet or six.

We’re introduced to Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen in interesting fashion, with Brynner the gunslinger with a conscience (breaking tradition by wearing a black hat, no less) and McQueen his sturdy right-hand man first being seen taking up the unenviable task of driving a stagecoach with the body of a non-white to be buried. People are too scared to go because there’s a mean posse waiting in the wings to stop it from happening. Even the local undertaker (a very fine cameo by ubiquitous character actor Whit Bissell) is too scared to go himself. Although Takashi Shimura was one of the few standouts in “The Seven Samurai”, Yul Brynner essentially playing his counterpart here is truly iconic. Even cooler than ‘The Cooler King’ McQueen himself, Brynner is a master class of supreme confidence and calm, but with a touch of nobility and humility as well. He’s a gunman like the other six, but this guy fights because these villagers are so determined to be rid of Calvera that they will offer up everything they have. He doesn’t want the reward, he simply understands their desperation and need. McQueen actually doesn’t get all that much to say or do in this, but he does get the film’s best line ‘We deal in lead, friend’ towards Calvera and has an undeniable star power which is priceless.

For me the standout isn’t Brynner or even my personal favourite actor of the bunch James Coburn. No, my favourite character and performance here comes from Robert Vaughn, in a role he would later transplant to outer space for producer Roger Corman’s highly underrated sci-fi variant of the tale “Battle Beyond the Stars”. Vaughn’s immaculately dressed, high-falutin’ professional killer is one of the more fascinating characters in any western. He’s the guy in that old story you hear in many westerns about the fastest gunman on the draw who kills so many people that now it’s just a matter of time before he meets that one guy even faster on the draw. It’s something that by this stage has rendered Vaughn’s Lee into a sort of PTSD, night terrors-induced panic. What I like about Vaughn’s performance the most is that it’s actually a fairly gradual descent into panic. The signs are there from the beginning that this guy is losing his grip and his nerve, they just get more and more prominent. ***** SPOILER ALERT ***** Vaughn also gets the most uncomfortable-looking death scene in any western I’ve ever seen. Dude surely must’ve hurt his nose filming that, facing a wall and falling down into a sitting position. ***** END SPOILER *****

Along with Yul Brynner, Charles Bronson is the heart and conscience of this film, playing a rather modest man saddled for much of the film with a few local children who treat him like a hero, whilst calling their fathers cowards. Bronson’s O’Reilly, after spanking the shit out of them, teaches them the true meaning of bravery. It’s a perfect role for Bronson’s taciturn abilities and general working class man’s man aura.

I’ve often called James Coburn the coolest actor to ever live, and he’s definitely one of my favourite actors of all-time. Vaughn may be the snazziest dresser, but Coburn’s the coolest guy in the room just through being James Coburn. He specifically asked for the role he gets here, an expert with both a gun and knives. He’s perfectly cast, giving a lean, efficient, perfectly economical performance as a guy who lets his trade do the talking. He says a lot without saying anything (and he probably shouldn’t have said anything at all in “The Great Escape”, playing an Australian to questionable results), just look at the scene where the villagers are all celebrating. They think they’ve shooed Calvera away for good. Coburn gives a look barely visible in the background that suggests he predicts otherwise. Less than 30 seconds later, he’s proven right. It’s amazing that an actor with one of cinema’s greatest speaking voices could also communicate just as effectively with his face and posture. Even in “The Great Escape”, the way Coburn would lean a certain way helped bridge the gap between nationality and accent somewhat. Coburn also, along with McQueen is responsible for much of the film’s small amount of humour.

The final two members of the seven are played by the least well-known actors, who also happen to give the least memorable performances. Brad Dexter (apparently an associate of Frank Sinatra’s for a while) is often forgotten by those less prone to remembering useless trivia than I, but as Brynner’s foolish gold-seeking pal Harry Luck, he’s perfectly fine. As for the part played in the original by the great Toshiro Mifune, Sturges cast German actor Horst Buchholz. Yep. I know that we’ve already got a Russian-born part-Mongolian leading man in Yul Brynner, but he was the one truly established star at the time. Buchholz was a failed attempt by Sturges to make a new star. He’s far from awful in the part, but major stardom just wasn’t in the cards and he probably shouldn’t have been cast given how important the character is. Next to Brynner, Buchholz has the plum role here (The super-charismatic Toshiro Mifune knocked the Japanese equivalent of the role out of the park in “The Seven Samurai”).

The film has a lot to say about masculinity, heroism, and gun-fighting. Although it’s not as grim as say Michael Winner’s underrated “Lawman”, there’s no doubt that screenwriters William Roberts (“Bridge at Remagen”, Charles Bronson’s “10 to Midnight”), Walter Bernstein (“Fail Safe”, “The Train”, “The Front”), and Walter Newman (“The Man With the Golden Arm”, “Bloodbrothers”) have something serious to say here. It’s in the scene where Bronson scolds the kids for badmouthing their fathers for not being heroic like him. It’s certainly in the Vaughn character, a veteran killer of men now reduced to night terrors awaiting his own doom. That’s the darkest the film gets. It’s in the Coburn character, who is constantly in competition with himself, trying to get better and better at his trade. And it’s most certainly in the Yul Brynner character. There’s a great scene where Brynner basically humiliates Horst Buchholz’s character, who is a wannabe gunfighter. It’s not because the Brynner character is a prick, he’s trying to teach this kid that killing is serious business and he wants to save the kid from getting killed. In a later but similar scene, Brynner’s stillness and calm in the face of Buchholz’s rage says it all about both characters. Brynner is afraid of no man, and Buchholz is yet to fully become one. Westerns weren’t often known for having great scripts, but this is definitely a great script. It also gives each of the characters little bits of business, with Bronson and the kids, Buchholz and Coburn are basically trying to prove something to themselves, Vaughn has inner turmoil, Dexter’s on the hunt for hidden treasure etc.

One of the most iconic elements of the film is the score by Elmer Bernstein (“The Great Escape”), one of the greats from one of the greats. The film has two iconic themes, firstly the main theme that everyone knows and loves. Then there’s Calvera’s theme, which frankly ought to be the theme for every mean posse riding into town with bad intentions. It’s almost as bad arse as Ennio Morricone’s ‘Man With the Harmonica’ from “Once Upon a Time in the West” (The theme used in the unforgettable reveal of Henry Fonda’s cold blue-eyed killer Frank). Awesome trivia note: John Williams, future composer of every movie you hold near and dear, played in Bernstein’s orchestra here, playing piano. So the film’s just that extra bit more magnificent now that I’ve learned that little bit of trivia.

An all-time classic of any genre, this one has memorable characters, cinematography, story, music, and themes. It fires on all cylinders and is a must-see for any film buff worth their salt. More importantly, it’s great entertainment and helped bridge the gap between the John Wayne era of western and the darker, amoral spaghetti westerns to follow.

Rating: A+