Kicking off with one of cinema's most memorable music themes by music legend Elmer Bernstein, Magnificent Seven instantly has that essential western spirit with a sweeping jostling score that throws you right in the saddle and gets you mustering across the rolling plains. Coupled with Charles Lang's beautiful cinematography of dusty villages and hoarding banditos there's no doubt why this score has earned it's place amongst the great Western themes such as Ennio Morricone's ghostly whistling from The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (1966) and Gioachino Rossini's William Tell Overture now unanimous with The Lone Ranger (1933).
As a side note not only is Bernstein considered the "John Williams" of his time,
Williams was actually the piano player in the orchestra under Bernstein
when the hit theme was scored. And with combined talent like that it's no wonder this iconic theme has been used throughout the age's from ads for Marlborough cigarettes to featuring in the James Bond 1979 flick Moonranker and even parodied by Aussie beer brewer Victoria Bitter. Whilst slower paced than today's westerns the likes of Quinton Tarantino's The Hateful Eight (2015) or John Hillcoat's The Proposition (2005) Sturges keeps the audience griped to the screen with a mix of gunfights, character moments and the occasional laugh. Though the later was most likely brought about by the escalating competition between main co-stars Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen, and quickly spread amongst the rest of the cast as they endlessly attempted to draw attention away from each other during takes with over the top gestures and mannerisms. Overall it is this quick witted banter within the seven that make them so unique as soldiers-of-fortune turned hero's and separates them from Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai (1954) from which this film was adapted.
The basic story is simple enough to follow with a small Mexican town under threat of the raiding horde of Eli Wallace's moustache twirling Calvera, and so hire a band of misfits to defend themselves. The seven consisting of Chris, Vin, Chico, Bernado, Brit, Harry, and Lee, (played by Robert Vaughn who many will recognise as Baxter for BASEketball) are your average kind of ruffians with the usual tropes of the leader, the thief, the knife man, the kid and so on all being present, a modern example of this tale can be easily seen in Pixar's 1998 film A Bug's Life. Never the less the seven hit their marks with style with some truly inspiring choreography such as Britt's knife dual, and Lee's fastest in the west last stand. Unfortunately there's no real final show down between Chris and Calvera which audiences have come to expect from the genre, but rather a big piece gunfight between the seven and the whole horde. Which whilst exciting and chocked full of moments for our heroes to shine, leaves the conclusion of the story feeling slightly underwhelming as the heroes and villagers go on as if this happens every other day. As a sucker for a good western and all the hard as nails campiness it can offer such as the likes of Back to the Future Part III (1990), Gunsmoke (1955), True Grit (1969) and The Adventures of Brisco County Jr (1993), it was fantastic to see what the genre could do when put in the hands who knows it inside and out. And Sturges doesn't disappoint masterfully utilising the beautiful landscape of his Cuernavaca and Durango locations within Magnificent Seven, to create a vision of striking mountains, flowing streams and golden fields, bringing the Mexican wilderness to life and making it a character in its own right.
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