My Favourite Movies: The Magnificent Seven

My love of Westerns can easily be traced back to my father who was a huge fan of the genre. This particular example is, in my opinion, one of the best of its type. Based on the Japanese classic The Seven Samurai it tells to story of an oppressed Mexican village who seek help from American gunfighters down on their luck. Fortune is with them when they hire Chris – played iconically by Yul Brynner – to find the men they need. Each of the six additional gunfighters are introduced in cameo scenes that give an insight into their character as well as their character flaws. They are all, including Brynner himself, lost souls who have spent their lives being the best at what they do (with the noted exception of the youngest member Chico) that of killing rather than being killed. Now, as guns for hire, they have the opportunity to reflect on their profession and wait for their opportunity to redeem a part of their humanity buried under years of brutality.

The reason I think that this movie has stood the test of time and remained one of my favourite films is that it is much more that a simple cowboy film. It’s a film about life choices, it’s about regrets and above all else it’s about honour. The two main characters – played by Brynner and McQueen (pictured above) - are, despite their backgrounds, men steeped in ideals of honour. Despite the fact that they are being paid hardly anything at all they put their lives on the line and even return to the fight because of their agreement with the peasants. This is the fact that so confounds the bandit leader played by Eli Wallach because he is a man singularly without any idea of honour – as an aside I was most impressed by the fact that when asked Chris failed to answer the question why they came back, underlying the fact that Wallach should have known.

For years after seeing this film I simply wanted to be the Yul Brynner character. I guess in some way he became one of my childhood heroes – for reasons I’m only now beginning to understand. It obviously struck a chord with other people too when ‘Chris’ was resurrected in robot form – as an unstoppable killer – in the classic 70’s Sci-Fi Westworld. As a standard western The Magnificent Seven is a classic of its type but, digging just a little deeper, it is also much more than that. Watched with a critical eye it’s about the choice of virtue over vice, good over evil. It’s just so much more than a cowboy film.