The Magnificent Seven

Rating:
Summary: Great movie and Television show
Review: This is a great movie with a lot of action and a super soundtrack to boot. The characters are all well done, dimential, and fully fleshed out. Some of those old guys were really cute then. The comming together of the group into a cohesivness is well written and acted. One of the greatest movies made to date. The best western movie now and forever. Simi- pregual to a wonderful television series currently looking for a home filled with great action and sexy guys. Let the Seven Ride!

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Summary: My Favorite Western
Review: I'm a huge fan of Westerns; mysterious strangers, barfights, Mexican bandit crimelords. This one has everything, and it is simply the best of the genre.

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Summary: The Western that got me hooked
Review: My dad is a huge western movie fan. I never was until he and I sat down and watched this movie. I was stunned. I'm now a western film addict. James Coburn is great in this movie. I love his knife throwing contest with the man who calls him a liar. Great movie. Definitly a must see.

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Summary: THRILLING WESTERN ADAPTATION OF JAPANESE ORIGINAL
Review: "The Magnificent Seven" is based on the Japanese movie, "Seventh Samari". The updating and transmutation of the original premise - that of seven desperados out to avenge a ruthless cutthroat's stronghold on a poor community - is, for once in the business of remaking movies, totally justified. Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen star as two of the seven with character actor, Eli Walsh doing a bang-up job of being the villain. This is one thrilling western and a film that deserves a much better transfer than the one it currently has received on DVD.
MGM Home Entertainment gives us a tired, worn print with faded colors and a barrage of age related blemishes - all this, while calling the disc a "Special Edition". I'd hate to see what their standard issues look like. Oops! I've seen them and they're nothing to write home about! But back to this DVD.
Colors can be rich and nicely balanced at times. However, most of the movie's color scheme has suffered from the natural ravages of time. Blacks are weak. Browns, beiges and light grays all appear to have the same muddy texture. Reds are slightly orange and flesh tones are not very natural. There's a considerable amount of edge enhancement and fine detail shimmering throughout. Chips, scratches, dirt and tears in the original print are evident throughout. The audio is stereo but feebly so with a forward sounding characteristic that is not terribly engaging. Special effects sound strident. The music is generally well represented.
EXTRAS: A making-of that falls somewhere short of a full fledged documentary but too long to be considered a featurette. A theatrical trailer and an audio commentary too.
The menu for this film is pretty bad - suffering from excessive edge enhancement and aliasing problems. Why bother?
Bottom line: If you're a fan - get it. It won't break you. Just don't expect that the term "Special Edition" means the film has been given any special treatment on DVD!

Rating:
Summary: A review of the DVD in specific
Review: This is a superbly remastered and restored film, It comes with some brilliant extras including original trailers and more interestingly a documentary on the film named "Guns For Hire".
If you are a fan of the actors in this classic you'll love the doco which shows what they went on to do and includes some interviews showing the actors today and telling how Yul Brynner brought this tale to life.
For Steve McQueen fans you get a little insight into how he tries to steal every scene he appears in.
The film is a great telling of an adventurous story based on the Toho studios film "The Seven Samurai".
The commentary features actors James Coburn, Eli Wallach, producer Walter Mirisch & Ass Director Rob Reylea. It covers many interesting stories from a set which saw several stars of the time and even the wedding of Yul Brynner.
Worth a viewing.

Rating:
Summary: Wanted to Give it 5 Stars, BUT...
Review: This movie was excellent, from the brassy music to the awesome cast and storyline (from The Seven Samurai. It is just too bad that there are at least three scenes that require the viewers to leave the room until they are over. All three of these feature a certain person, played by Horst Buchholz. They say that his character's name is Chico, but I prefer to call him the "Stupid Kid." He is the only damper on an otherwise perfect movie. It is a terrible shame, from his lovely appearance, as he stupidly follows the hearse, to his speech to the farmers about how cowardly they are, to his love affair with the stupid girl, to his ....oh I can't go on.....

Rating:
Summary: The way of the gun
Review: "The Magnificent Seven" thunders back onto video with a special edition DVD from MGM. The Saturday afternoon TV favorite regains much of its original sweep with a 2.35:1 widescreen presentation that makes it easier for viewers to take in the large cast of stars and soon-to-be-stars. The color transfer is an improvement on past video efforts, although some age spots are in evidence. The mono sound comes through with plenty of muscle, but the 5.1 mix fails to justify its existence with almost no activity to the rear speakers. (Beware the jaw-dropping volume difference between the menu and film.) Elmer Bernstein's iconic score gets the star treatment it deserves throughout. The 1960 remake of Akira Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai" stars Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen, with Eli Wallach as the bandit king undone by his belief in honor among dangerous men. Brynner turns in a stand-up performance as Chris, the Christ-figure leader, but it's Wallach who shows the boys how it's done via a magnificent performance laden with grease and bluster. A first-rate 46-minute documentary (in widescreen) begins with the story of how Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai" electrified Hollywood professionals when it hit town in 1956. Brynner, in file footage, brags of how he immediately grabbed the rights for a remake, but it was in fact writer-producer Lou Morheim who imported the tale for a mere $250. As the project got under way, Morheim was relegated to associate producer, with studio favorite Walter Mirisch taking the reins. Production was rushed, with the specter of a Hollywood strike riding hard on the project's heels. The docu aptly makes the case that "Magnificent Seven" was a transitional work from the classic age of westerns to the grim, gory works of Sergio Leone and Sam Peckinpah.

Rating:
Summary: Strap on your six-shooter!
Review: MGM has just released the DVD of "The Magnificent Seven", perhaps the very last of an epoch of classic westerns. Poignant and sad, yet thrilling and action-filled, this cinema classic became a model for 100 action flicks to come. It's an early peek at the emerging movie anti-hero of the 60's and the 70's. An embattled farming village in Northern Mexico hires an unemployed gunslinger from Dodge City. Chris, played by Yul Brynner, recruits six more guns and takes a bloody stand against forty invading banditos. The film opened in 1960 to mild reviews. It was sent off to Europe, where it exploded with positive response. "The Seven" returned to the U.S. to wide acclaim, and as co-star James Coburn says in the documentary, "It's been playing ever since..." John Sturges filmed "Bad Day at Black Rock", "Gunfight at the OK Corral", and "The Great Escape", but history confirms that the meticulous out-door director achieved his artistic peak with this star-studded spectacle, featuring Elmer Bernstein's now classic theme. The film was followed by 3 sequels and a TV show that ran for 2 years. The DVD sound dialogue is a bit muted. The anamorphic 16:9 picture is perhaps the clearest ever, though you'll see some grain fallout during the lap dissolves. An audio commentary track with producer Walter Mirisch and several actors comes with 2 trailers and photos from the actual shoot and cast party. The real jewel of this new DVD is a brand new 46-minute documentary featuring interviews with all the major surviving stars, except Charles Bronson, who just turned 80. Charles Coburn, Eli Wallach, and Robert Vaughn re-live the adventures of filming this epic on location in Cuernavaca, Mexico. Amusing tales of future super-star Steve McQueen are revealed by his ex-wife. McQueen intentionally crashed his sports car to leave his TV series, "Wanted Dead or Alive", and join the cast of "Seven". Yul Brynner so enjoyed his all-black gunfighter attire that he repeated the same exact outfit in at least 4 more movies. Yul Brynner died of lung cancer in 1985. Steve McQueen died of cancer in 1980. Thanks to this timeless and valuable DVD, "The Magnificent Seven" may never die. After the raging battle ends, Brynner's character looks down on newly dug graves for the brave villagers. "We didn't do it.."he says. "Only the farmers win. We never win..."

Rating:
Summary: Doesn't live up to its classic billing
Review: The Magnificent Seven, a Western remake of Kurosawa's Seven Samurai, is a good movie, but hardly the classic that many people would make it out to be. The simplistic plot delivers exactly what it should, but the film falls short in its character development, possibly because of the limits of a 2-hour running time.

A small early 1900s Mexican farming village has been pillaged for years by a group of bandits lead by a man named Calvera (Eli Wallach). When the bandits come through, the villagers are left with hardly enough food to feed half of them; but since they are a group of farmers, they have no way of protecting themselves from Calvera and his men. After consulting the village elder, they decide to look for a group of gunfighters to protect them.

Enter Chris Adams (Yul Brynner), a drifter through the plains of the Old West, with nothing to lose, and not much to gain except respect for himself. Three representatives from the village seek his help, and, having nothing better on his plate at the moment, he agrees and assembles a group of seven men to protect the village.

The cast is a veritable who's who of 1960s tough guy actors: Brynner, Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, and James Coburn among others. All of these men can act, but there's just not enough time to give full weight to all seven of the gunfighters, and the film feels incomplete because of this.

Also, The Magnificent Seven has not aged particularly well since its initial release almost 45 years ago. It's hard to believe that around the turn of the century in a small farming village in Mexico, all of the people would be bilingual, and not only that, but some of them speak English so well that the only way we can tell that they are supposed to be Mexican is by their bodily characteristics.

Of course, any discussion of The Magnificent Seven is not complete without mentioning Elmer Bernstein's legendary score. It is the true star of the film, and it does not disappoint at all. All of this is not to say that the film does not have its merits - it's a very enjoyable popcorn-type movie - but, for me, it does not live up to its lofty billing.

Rating:
Summary: One of the All-Time Great Westerns
Review: By now most people know this movie was based on legendary Japanese Director Akira Kurosawa's "The Seven Samurai". Still, Kurosawa himself loved the movie.
A band of seven gunfighters, led by Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen, comes to the aid of a poor, Mexican village, constantly under attack by a gang of vicious gang of Bandits, led by Eli Wallach.

Perhaps most memorable as being the first REAL big film for such stars as McQueen, James Coburn, and Charles Bronson. Great action and of course the famous score by Elmer Bernstein.

The sub-plots of the making of the movie include these big names, particlarly McQueen and Brynner constantly trying to one up wach other with background histrionics.

The DVD includes a new documentary done in 2001 which includes new interviews with surviving cast members but also old footage of Brynner. Holds up well after 40 plus years! also includes a commentary track. Highly recommended!