Rating: 
Summary: UK CUSTOMERS BEWARE
Review: I have just received my R1 copy of "The Magnificent Seven" from Amazon.com but I am unable to watch it on my Multi-Region Toshiba SD100E player. There is no mention of any R.C.E. coding, either on this web site or on the packaging. This is the first region 1 movie that I have had problems with. I am obviously gutted because I know the film itself is excellent. :-(
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: Seven! Seven! Seven! The Mag-nif-icent Seven!
Review: "The Magnificent Seven" gets a grand introduction to the realm of DVDs with this release. Just starting the DVD up is a rush that raises the excitement level for the film, as the opening menu kicks off in stirring fashion with Bernstein's rousing score and selected clips from the film. The movie transfer seems to be ok. I wished it could have been clearer and more crisp, but I am not sure if that was even possible. As it was, the picture was definitely leaps and bounds better than anything you'll find on VHS. The DVD extras are wonderful, too, featuring movie trailers (including an infamously tacky one that provided me with my subject header), talent bios, audio commentary, and best of all a retrospective documentary featuring most of the cast and crew involved. The backdrop of the documentary is that you had a number of young stars (Horst Buccholz, Charles Bronson, Steve McQueen, James Coburn, and Robert Vaughn) who were trying to outdo each other in drawing notice in this film, and the retrospect provides some delicious 20/20 hindsight to the whole thing. The movie itself is a wonderful adaptation of Kurosawa's "The Seven Samurai", which itself was influenced heavily by Kurosawa's fascination with the Western genre and in particular John Ford. "The Magnificent Seven" adroitly adapts the themes of Kurosawa's film, especially the overarcing theme of what it means to be a warrior or, by this film's definition, a cowboy. The performances are wonderful, the direction is solid, and the score transcends the film from great Western to classic cinema. Well worth your time and purchase.
Rating:
Summary: Great Movie - DVD is flawed though
Review: Enough has been said in the past about this fantastically entertaining movie, so I won't bore you with anything more. My comments concern the DVD, it's nicely presented, with an interesting documentary and feature commentary, certainly a bargain given the incredibly low price tag. The 5.1 sound remix is excellent, but I have to say that the very obvious grain and print damage on the movie itself knocked my assessment of the DVD down from a 5 star rating to 4 stars. I realise that the movie is over 40 years old but some of the print damage in very noticeable, and given modern cleaning techniques I think it is difficult to believe that at least some effort could have been made to clean things up a bit. Having said that this DVD is still greatly superior to any VHS copy I've seen and well worth the money despite its flaws.
Rating:
Summary: Magnificent Film, Above Average DVD
Review: There is no disputing that John Sturges' THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN is a terrific western, full of action, suspense, and humor. All comparisons to SEVEN SAMURAI aside, this Americanized version of the Japanese classic is a classic in its own right. I was very enthusiastic about watching this new special edition DVD of this wonderful film, so I have to say sadly that I was just a bit disappointed. The film has not really been remastered, and thus, the image is full of artifacts displaying the movie's age. It's not unusual for a movie over forty years old to look this way, but it's disappointing nonetheless. The colors are solid, and the widescreen framing gives us the entire picture, all to the good. But those specks and that dirt that keep coming with relentless consistency occasionally ruin the wonderful screen compositions. The sound is even more disappointing. Though being advertised as remastered Dolby Digital 5.1 sound, it's really basically mono. In addition, there is virtually no bass in the sound mix, so the superb Elmer Bernstein score, one of the true classics in film music, isn't heard to optimum effect. Occasionally some of the music drifts into the back speakers, but no sound effects have been routed there, and the result is a sound design not as spectacular as the film it's linked with. There is a fantastic 46 minute documentary done in anomorphic widescreen with full-bodied sound that is a wonderful bonus, and the running commentary that accompanies the film is also most welcome. MGM hasn't provided a bad package with this classic. It's just that what's good could have been so much better.
Rating:
Summary: Bravo! A must have in your collection!
Review: Wow! What a great movie. I just purchased this film on dvd and was blown away. This along with "High Noon" are my favorite westerns of all time and I was delighted to add this to my collection. First off the acting, writing, and action are all top notch. It is just as good as the film it is based on " The Seven Samurai" by Akira Kurasawa. Yul Bryner and Steve Mcqueen are the stars along with a super lineup including Charles Bronson and James Coburn. The music is fantastic, it propells the film to even higher heights. Not only is this a great western but it also has touches of human emotions(especially by Bronson)that tug at your heartstrings and don't let go. The dvd itself is excellent with a new high definition transfer(although I noticed a few scratches, but they were extremely limited). Also an excellent 5.1 soundtrack! Don't pass on this one.
Rating:
Summary: One of The Last Great Westerns
Review: Before the advent of the Spaghetti Western and the few good films that followed came The Magnificent Seven. The Wild Bunch, The Long Riders and several others owe their creative souls to this movie. I like Yul Brenner, if you have seen Westworld, well this is where Mr. Brenner began the character he later used in that film. Charles Bronson , Steve McQueen, Eli Wallach, what a cast! And the heroic notion of helping a village of peasants fight tyranny....what more can you ask for!? The special features, well maybe not like in some more modern videos, but it is nice to hear Eli, and James Coburn and the directors and producers wax nostalgic about said movie...I admire their acting capabilities and their knowledge of film in general, so I enjoyed this a lot. If you are a lover of the Western genre, then by all means you have to have this for your collection! And the music too. What a score!
Rating:
Summary: Fair exchange
Review: Akira Kurosawa built generous part of his career borrowing from the Western Culture but nobody ever blamed him for that, so naturally he grafted Western stories into Japanese realm. Now Hollywood took his story, his plot, his characters and planted them Southwestern realm, just like it was there from the start. It is a little bit schematic, but that's by design, just like "West Side Story" - realized as a legend, as a fairy tale, an epic poem. Some dialogues spark and shine with depth, humor and honesty not to forget.
Rating: 
Summary: Certainly Overrated - especially if compared to the original
Review: There's a tendency of the customer reviews of any item to be mostly adoring fan accolades, or else a few bitter pans by the disappointed. Everyone else never even ends up at the DVD's page at all. This film is a very close remake of the great classic "The Seven Samurai" by Akira Kurosawa (also available on DVD from Amazon). I noticed that most of the long, elaborate reviews don't even mention this, and most of the story elements that they praise are actually also found in the original. For the most part, this remake adds very little to the original. The acting here is mostly wooden, although that seems to be the norm for Westerns. Most of the more complex material, such as the relationship between the village girl and the samurai (gunslinger), has been removed for the Hollywood remake, leaving just a smattering of philosophical mutterings about the difference between being a gunslinger and a farmer. For the first two-thirds of the film, it follows very closely the story line of the original. But then, when it begins to diverge - in order to shorten the story and simplify it for a wider audience - the carefully constructed plausibility of the original is lost, and we end up with a completely implausible ending, both in terms of motivation, and in terms of tactics and strategy. The original "Seven Samurai" goes to great lengths to create a plausible scenario of how seven men could have a chance at defending a village against 40 bandits. In typical Hollywood fashion, this is thrown out in favor of the typical nonsense whereby protagonists can shoot and kill all bad guys without aiming, whereas bad guys can never hit anything, no matter how many hundreds of times they shoot. The lengths gone to accomodate Western stereotypes hit a peak, when in a very poor village with open-air rooms and few walls, when our heroes are attacked, they find themselves in a house with glass windows - since it is obviously required that gunslingers must knock out a window in order to shoot back! Of course, to ship these windows thousand of miles would have cost more than the worth of the whole village.... I suppose plausibility has never been a feature of most Westerners, but I have to be dismayed with how the careful construction of the original film has been dispensed with in this remake. Nevertheless, I give this film 3 stars because it is well made, and those who love Westerns will certainly want to see it. But those who are more wide ranging film fans are advised to instead rent or buy the original "The Seven Samurai" by Akira Kurosawa. PS Other films inspired by The Seven Samurai, include "Battle Beyond The Stars" where this story is mixed with the Star Wars story (and Robert Vaughn reprises his Magnificent Seven role); "A Bug's Life" where ant villagers are attacked by grasshopper bandits, and the classic Hindi film "Sholay" (starring the world's most famous actor Amitabh) where only two gunslingers defend the villagers from the bandits.
Rating:
Summary: My Favorite Film in Widescreen VHS
Review: I have not seen "The Magnificent Seven" in widescreen since I first saw it in the theatre in 1960. I have been watching it in pan & scan for about 40 years now. It is my favorite motion picture. Seeing it in widescreen opened new vistas for me. It finaly seems like the large scale yet personal drama that it always deserved to be. I can greater appreciate the composition of the different camera frames by noticing facial expressions and the like that have gone unnoticed for years. There is more character development here than I even imagined. There is more beauty and detail to the landscape unto which the story unfolds. The film has now at last taken on legendary proportions thanks to this format. Yul Brynner as Chris, Steve McQueen as Vin, Charles Bronson as O'Reilly, Robert Vaughn as Lee, Brad Dexter as Harry Luck, James Coburn as Britt and Horst Buchholz as Chico are all imbedded into the psyche of anyone who ever saw this movie and felt its emotional impact. These are real screen heroes. There is something very magical about this film. This is different from every other Western that came before it. I believe it is the nature of the seven gunfighters, their motives for that one chance at gallantry and redemption. That combined with the way the story is visually told makes for its greatness. It teaches us something about nobility, dignity and devotion. The hearse-ride taken up to Boot Hill with Yul Brynner driving and Steve McQueen riding shotgun sets the stage and tone for the entire film. Images such as when Charles Bronson, is bent over with a bullet inside and the three little Mexican boys clutch him crying out his name while in his death throes bring a tear to the eye. In another the viewer reflects along with Yul Brynner as he takes the lifeless James Coburn's knife out of the adobe wall and folds it gently in his hand. These are heart rendering and indelible images. Even Eli Wallach as the bandit Calvera gets his moment of pathos. After being mortally wounded by Yul Brynner's bullet, Calvera can not believe that the seven came back to save the village even after the villagers told them that they did not want their help anymore. "You came back. A man like you. Why?" asks Calvera as he dies. Yul Brynner has no answer for him. It was as if Brynner had committed some sacrilege. Director John Sturges captured the ambiguities of the human spirit in this film. Just as he directed "The Great Escape," Sturges' directorial style is so smooth that his own storytelling glosses right over the depth and complexity of his own work. The ultimate shame is that all Sturges' profoundness is all right up there on the screen. He literally outdoes himself along with a little help from Elmer Bernstein's score and William Roberts' script. Bernstein's insertion of quick tempo snippets here and there into the score advances the film and pulls the viewer right into the narrative with an emotional fervor along with his unforgettable main title theme. William Roberts' script is so full of memorable and engaging dialogue that it too smoothly advances the story with ease and shear magnetism playing on our emotions. For me Yul Brynner was the epitome of 'cool' and aplomb. From his dark gray and black outfit down to the tip of his thin cheroot he was the kind of man others look up to but keep their distance. Yul Brynner as Chris, was a man of few words and often communicated by the mere gesture of the hand. Of the seven, he was the cohesive element that drew them together simply by his demeanor. The aura of his worldliness beckoned them all to the place he was heading. It was the same place they were all going. He was just the first to recognize it. Brynner too was the cohesive element that kept them all together. Brynner was the one who followed some unwritten code of honor that is only alluded to in a few passages. McQueen was perfect as the gunfighter who was "just drifting" and signed on with Brynner. The levelheaded McQueen represents the other characters' realizations one by one as they join. James Coburn was perfect, as the stoic knife throwing Britt, who lived only for the thrill of the moment. Charles Bronson as O'Reilly played his stoically rugged but sympathetic role better than any actor could have. Bronson had a unique visual presence whose kind facial expressions counterbalanced his pockmark face and strong physique. Bronson was a conundrum unto himself and perfect for the role. Brad Dexter's performance as the unlucky fortune hunter has gone unrecognized. He was the least noble of the seven and died the mercenary that he was, yet there is some nobility to one's profession in that. Still, he gains our sympathy after returning in the clutch and saves his friend Chris and in turn is killed. Dying in the arms of his friend, Chris lets him go to the grave with a lie. Robert Vaughn's character was probably the most interesting of the seven. His enigmatic portrayal of Lee the tormented soul and not really the coward he labeled himself somehow never stood out. Only his act of redemption, his gunplay and death during the finale lingers. Vaughn's portrayal is a success because as he said he was "the coward hiding out in the middle of a battlefield" and at that he succeeded. Horst Buchholz gave an energetic and bravura performance the only one of the seven that had not yet been corrupted by the world. At the end he symbolically hangs his guns up and roles up his sleeves. Brynner and McQueen say that "only the farmers have won" and they lost. As they ride off into screen immortality I think we all won.
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