"...the graveyards are full of boys who were very young and very proud."
1960's The Magnificent Seven is one of the all-time great Westerns. In my opinion, it's up in that top-tier alongside classics like True Grit (the 1969 one), The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Once Upon a Time in the West, and The Searchers just to name a few. Yes, the movie is essentially a remake of Akira Kurosawa's 1954 film Seven Samurai, just set in the old west, but it still feels like it's own thing.
The plot involves a small Mexican village that is occasionally raided by bandits. Since the village is primarily populated by farmers, three of the men decide to set out to purchase some guns to protect themselves against the bandits. It isn't long before they come across a gunslinger named Chris (played by Yul Brynner), who convinces them that hiring experienced gunfighters would be cheaper then buying guns. They agree, and Chris recruits five other guys; Vin (played by Steve McQueen), Bernardo (played by Charles Bronson), Harry (played by Brad Dexter), Britt (played by James Coburn), and Lee (played by Robert Vaughn). Shortly after they head off toward the Mexican village, a headstrong, young gunslinger named Chico (played by Horst Buchholz) convinces Chris to let him tag along, bringing the group to seven. All goes pretty well initially, with the group working with the farmers to build some fortifications for the village and training some of them to shoot. A few days later when the bandits return, the seven and the villagers hold their ground fairly well and the town celebrates, believing it's all over and they won. Of course it's not that easy and I won't jot down any more of the plot here in case you've never seen the film.
Overall, this is one I highly recommend. I think it's perfectly cast, incredibly entertaining and rewatchable, and it has one of the best musical scores of any Western. The themes from The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly and A Fistful of Dollars are probably two of the only pieces of music in a Western as iconic as the main title theme of this film.
If you've never seen it, go watch it.
5 out of 5
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