Saturday, December 23, 2017

The Magnificent Seven

A town on the western frontier during gold rush days is being bullied by a land owner. Townspeople are being killed and land being stolen in service of said landowner gaining control of local gold mines. Enter Denzel Washington as bounty hunter / gun for hire (with his own beef to pick with said land owner) as charismatic savior of the town. Washington rounds up a cadre of "tough customers" to help him in his deposing (disposing?) of bad land owner. All of this you know exactly from the beginning, and you know exactly how it will play out. And yet somehow I still found this enjoyable and fresh. Maybe because a western is so rare that even a formulaic one is novel. Maybe because of the all star cast. Maybe because after midnight on a holiday break my bar for excellence is quite low. Regardless, without using the word excellence in a direct connection to the film, I do enjoy me a good western with requisite bad-guy heroes saving a town from bad-guy varmints.
4 stars

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