The Magnificent Seven (1960)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Magnificent Seven (1960) – J. Sturges

Watching this (for the first time) so soon after rewatching Seven Samurai (for the nth time) probably cast it in a poorer light than otherwise might be the case.  The swords become guns, the farmers Mexican, the bandits bandidos, but even with a more-or-less direct mapping of the personalities of the seven from samurais to gunslingers, something is lost in the translation from Kurosawa to Sturges.  Perhaps it is the elegiac tone (that would appear a decade later as Westerns wound down) or the dappled light (that disappears in the hot Mexican sun) that Kurosawa captures so brilliantly.  Still, the action here is well choreographed, the greater profile of the bandit leader (Eli Wallach)  lends the plot a different sort of balance, and the jostling of the many recognizable stars (Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, James Coburn, Charles Bronson, Robert Vaughn) creates tension not in the original. However, the result still pales in comparsion to Shichinin no Samurai.