Seven Samurai, No. 9 - China Gate (1998)

The last stop in our Seven Samurai remake extravaganza marks yet another facet of international cinema. China Gate, unlike the name’s suggestion, hails from Bollywood, those most prolific of all moviemakers. Indian film is an enormous question mark to me, despite this prolificacy, as it plays almost entirely to a homegrown audience, populist entertainments which do not travel well abroad. There is little of the self-serious pretension which caters to the art house circuits which usually champion foreign language film.

Most Bollywood films inhabit the musical genre, almost wholly forgotten elsewhere. For all my ignorance of this field, I have evidence enough of this fact, as my best exposure to Mumbai movies comes of trolling dance numbers on YouTube. Eh, that, plus some old Sanjarit Ray, and Slumdog Millionaire, which really doesn’t count. So China Gate is for me an immersion into an almost totally alien filmic style, made easier by a familiar narrative.

“Our humble tribute to late Akira Kurosawa.”

Director Rajkumar Santoshi is undoubtedly aware of the Japanese masterpiece which informs China Gate. As this version is basically a contemporary-set Indian western – a Curry Western, the term goes – there is also, unacknowledged, as much relationship to The Magnificent Seven. Oh, and reading a little about Indian film history, one discovers the original Indian western, Sholay, from 1975, which also borrowed from those previous sources. It is not, however, a Seven Samurai remake, as it is equally influenced by unrelated westerns such as Once Upon a Time in the West and The Wild Bunch. So when China Gate premiered in 1998, Indian critics were somewhat harsh on it for being an antiquated copy of Sholay, stylistically, with little to say on its own. I’m at a loss here, but I’ve got something new for my Netflix queue.

Directorially, one can still recognize certain overused tricks, which lose their value with repetition – tricks like silhouetted horsemen, Peckinpah-esque slow motion, ham-fisted symbolic reference to vultures again and again.


But there’s a world of conversation in picking apart China Gate’s tone and style, and let’s first set the stage. The village of Devdurg, out in a desert region of India I cannot identify, is under repeated violent assault from the bandit Jagira (Mukesh Tiwari). As we are talkin’ violent, a celebration of decapitations and eviscerations to rival Vlad the Impaler. Not that China Gate shall be persistently vicious, for its tonal strangeness.

A woman from the village seeks aid from Colonel Krishnakant Puri (Om Puri, seemingly one of the major Bollywood stars). Actually, we see this first, before even a narrated flashback reveals Jagira’s villainies. China Gate is equally efficient in assembling the team of heroes Krishnakant shall lead, as it’s done with a single nigh incomprehensible montage, and suddenly we’re beset with eleven – eleven – leads all at once. Also a dog.

These are some major upsets to the standard Seven Samurai scenario, as seen in basically all other variations. The speed of team assembly, which eliminates the recruiting section – usually the most fun portion of these remakes. (Upping the count from 7 to 11 makes little never mind, other than losing many, many characters in the mix.) That’s because China Gate has an agenda far different from its fellows. See, these ten + Krishnakant are all former soldiers, of the Indian army, who were all disgraced and court marshaled over a bungled mission 17 years ago called China Gate – making the inevitable controversy “China Gate Gate.” Ah hah! So the China Gate focus is on their past, their present relationship, with this mission to defend Devdurg an attempt to restore honor.


Now…China Gate is over 3 hours long – it’s the longest of all such exercises, excepting Seven Samurai itself. Having glossed over the first hour and change in under 20 minutes, it expends far more time upon the act of defending the village itself. And unlike Seven Samurai, there really isn’t enough content to justify this length, except for the notion that Bollywood films need length by audience expectations, as film-going in India holds a different social position than it does elsewhere.

The remaining – yikes! – two and a half hours are made up partly of repetitive desert shootout clashes between the Eleven and the bandits. These are never conclusive in any way, and there is no real strategy to it. Never once is defense of the village a true concern. Instead, the Eleven just occasionally shoot at the bandits, and vice versa, with the Eleven always triumphing (and bandits riding off) entirely due to their status as good guys. This fits in with the broad populist notions India apparently employs, but it renders China Gate a rather mindless adventure film with certain aims at Indiana Jones-style greatness.


As long as I’m critiquing the action styling of China Gate, let’s talk the heroes. I’ve not yet distinguished them – the only one who stands out to a Westerner’s eyes is second-in-command Colonel Kewal Krishan Puri (yeah, they’re all called Puri, which probably means something). He is officially the greatest badass in the bunch, because actor Amrish Puri (Puri!!!) is a known entity – he played Mola Ram in Temple of Doom! Whoo! Hence, I only thought of his chubby, mustachioed soldier as “Mola Ram” throughout the pic, hopelessly awaiting an eventual heart removal which never came.

Anyway, this particular Puri has fattened up a bit since his days of ‘80s villainy. All the heroes are little chubsters, which is perhaps appropriate as they’re all aging men seeking redemption. Eh, except apparently all Indian action heroes are the same – the nation seems to celebrate the pudgy, slow, middle-aged man above all else, something noted in this marvelous Cracked article. (Also this one.) My various Indian friends (I go to a tech school) attest this is true, yet the female Bollywood starlets are basically all the Hindi equivalent of Megan Fox – i.e. young, hot, but dumb as gerbils. Apparently, one may only attain celebrity in India by dancing all good like, and Indian dances apparently favor female voluptuousness and male rotundness. Ah, the double standard!

Not that China Gate’s action should all be a shallow, misread aping of old Spaghetti Westerns and early Michael Bay…as that same Cracked article proves.

Getting back to topic, I’m not wholly sure what China Gate is going for. It seems intent to replicate the mood of Seven Samurai, despite the changes. And that mood is one of utmost seriousness, even in an adventure tale populated with successful moments of comedy and levity. Actually, Seven Samurai is a brilliant example of how comic relief can work in a non-comic work. China Gate doesn’t understand that balance. It attempts, for all its seriousness, as much tonal variety as any great epic, yet…each tone is conveyed as obviously as possible.


For China Gate’s comic relief: If something “funny” is happening, the soundtrack will over insist, with “wacky,” “zany,” “lunatic” noises and splats, done with unsubtlety even Benny Hill would scoff at. This is helpful, as nothing on screen is ever apparently a joke, at least not legible as such abroad…Except for the moment where I inappropriately laughed at a cow, which was probably wrong.

As for the drama: Eh, let’s call it melodrama instead. Again, the soundtrack is responsible for overselling this too, but let’s give some credit to the actors. Many beat their chests, quiver their voices, and let the tears flow freely, any time something remotely dramatic/serious goes on. Hell, the first meeting between the Eleven has more hand-wringing forced sorrow than you’ll find in the whole of your average Oscar bait. They’re sort of peaking early, as they’re already at 11 (in the Spinal Tap sense, not the “eleven guys in this movie” sense), with nowhere to go but repeat this same thing every time dramatics return. And there is great disparity between a good performer like Mola Ram and the lesser players, apparently trained in the styles of bad silent cinema vaudeville.

As for action: Well…soundtrack! Really, that thing is damned manipulative. Imagine what Hans Zimmer was putting out in 1998; then imagine an Indian copycat of that. Not effective.


Moving off China Gate topic, it shouldn’t be too surprising that Indian genre fare is dominated by shallow imitations of more wholly competent filmic styles. Their popular film stories create utterly random mishmashes of (usually) American movies, with no real sense or art. So, I’m told, we have the movie where E.T. must defeat an evil Spider-Man (citation needed). What irks me about this, having chatted re: films with my Indian pals, is that they now cannot distinguish between the proper, well done Iron Man film, and something done on 1/50th the budget and with dance numbers.

I am acting protective of our blockbusters which I feel do have some value beyond profit. This creates an air of cinematic stagnation, where audiences genuinely disregard the value of, say, Star Wars because they’ve already seen their knockoff, so why bother? But these are the audiences which would never give a black & white, foreign language flick like Seven Samurai a chance in the first place, so it’s just as well they received their local version.


And, sadly, like many a remake of a foreign film, China Gate intends to replace Seven Samurai in local minds as much as The Ring was meant to completely supersede Ringu in the U.S. And back to that notion of seriousness. Santoshi wishes to fashion something as human, as grand, though it’s clear the competence is not wholly there – not Santoshi’s fault perhaps so much as local conditions. If the cast attests, the acting is not up to snuff, not enough for dramatic consistency amongst the players. Tone cannot be established genuinely, meaning China Gate rather oversells its hand to make a point. And for a viewer schooled to embrace the more subdued pleasures of the original Samurai, this makes China Gate a very interminable slog of never-changing scenes and techniques. Shootout, montage, dramatic argument, romantic interlude, shootout, montage, you follow.


But the surest evidence of serious intent, in a Bollywood pic, is a near refusal to kowtow to that holiest of Bollywood traditions – the musical. China Gate was conceived as that rarest of things: a Hindi picture completely without songs! That’d be like releasing a Batman movie without Batman. But as all but the first of my screen caps can attest (Indian DVDs do not agree with my computer), that is not what happened. There is a musical number in China Gate, one which starts shortly into the third hour, which totally catches you off guard. It is easily the best part of the movie.

And here it is, in full.



That’s “Chama Chama,” an Indian pop song performed by Urmila (at least she dances to it; the vocals are somebody else). She is another major celebrity in the Bollywood firmament, and her eleventh (as it were) hour addition to China Gate assured some box office success. That, for all this scene’s wonderfulness, is a testament to how compromised China Gate is, how no Indian film can surpass the local cheesy requirements. Still, most of China Gate’s fame comes from “Chama Chama,” which was even featured in Moulin Rouge! Here, proof.


This dance has no place in China Gate, and isn’t even a substitute for a sex scene, as dances oft are. It just happens with a single edit totally out of the blue. And if my Indian chums are to be believed, this’d be the stage where theater audiences take to the aisles and themselves recklessly dance all about. Wow, it’s an entire nation of midnight Rocky Horror screenings!

My focus veers towards “Chama Chama,” as does everyone’s, because it is so much more successful than the rest of China Gate, done admittedly in a bit of a sub-MTV filmic style, but with a certain uncommon confidence. And China Gate wasn’t cheap! It’s sort of the Indian equivalent of its contemporary Titanic, in terms of running ridiculously over any previous industry budget. Ah, but China Gate went the way we thought Titanic would go, proving only mildly successful to a disinterested audience. It turns out Bollywood boosters were not ready for a relatively self-serious affair, even if it has that tonal lumpiness which seems to define the industry. And viewers outside of India had no need for a falsely artful movie, like if Dan Brown tried to write at the level of James Joyce.

*************************************************************


China Gate may be the final feature length film to officially remake Seven Samurai, but there’s more to this exploration even now. We travel back to Japan for the 50 year anniversary of Seven Samurai, 2004, to find among the celebrations the first Japanese reworking of what was originally a Japanese work. “Samurai 7” is an anime retelling of the Kurosawa story, and in certain ways it is the most respectful adaptation. Many scenes of dialogue appear directly out of the original, and the story follows the same beats quite faithfully…to a point. See, “Samurai 7” is a TV show (hence it falls outside of this blog’s primary purview), so it stretches the 3.5 hour narrative even further, into a mighty 26 episodes – we’re talkin’ one episode per member of the group, and then some. And owing to its animated status, “Samurai 7” takes advantage of its medium, filling feudal Japan with a steam punk mélange of robots, spaceships, whatever else an insane imagination can dream up. I am partway through this series, watching it even though it won’t get treated here.

It’d be nice to claim the final Seven Samurai effort as belonging to Japan, and for the immediate time being it is. Rather distressingly, the Weinstein Company has long been discussing the possibility of doing another American Seven Samurai remake. What’s enraging about this isn’t the concept, seeing as we’ve already seen The Magnificent Seven, Kill a Dragon, and about 7 other similar efforts. But all with enough decency to claim their own names. Weinstein’s villainous droogs seem intent to maintain the Seven Samurai name itself, in a complete lack of respect for the source material, same as the long-threatened Rashomon remake. (Which already got its own western remake, The Outrage, as nearly no Kurosawa samurai epic can avoid a western remake – See also Yojimbo as A Fistful of Dollars, and The Hidden Fortress as…Star Wars?! Wow! [Okay, I already knew that one.])

What’s especially idiotic about this looming possible remake isn’t just its mere existence, but some specifics. In order to “contemporalize” it (why why why?!), it’ll be set not in the past, and not in Japan, for who cares about that? Nah, it’ll be about modern mercenaries rescuing a village in war-torn Burma…Wait, I’ve seen this movie! It was called Rambo – the fourth Rambo, that is, the one actually named that. Which means, yes, Rambo is another example of the Seven Samurai template reappearing in action cinema. Rambo is not a remake, not officially (besides, I gotta save the Rambo franchise for another day). It just goes to show ya how hugely important Seven Samurai has been already, and how foolish it is to try co-opting that name.


RELATED POSTS:
• No. 1 Seven Samurai (1954)
• No. 2 The Magnificent Seven (1960)
• No. 3 Kill a Dragon (1967)
• Nos. 4 - 8 (1979 - 1993)

Seven Samurai, No. 9 - China Gate (1998)

The last stop in our Seven Samurai remake extravaganza marks yet another facet of international cinema. China Gate, unlike the name’s suggestion, hails from Bollywood, those most prolific of all moviemakers. Indian film is an enormous question mark to me, despite this prolificacy, as it plays almost entirely to a homegrown audience, populist entertainments which do not travel well abroad. There is little of the self-serious pretension which caters to the art house circuits which usually champion foreign language film.

Most Bollywood films inhabit the musical genre, almost wholly forgotten elsewhere. For all my ignorance of this field, I have evidence enough of this fact, as my best exposure to Mumbai movies comes of trolling dance numbers on YouTube. Eh, that, plus some old Sanjarit Ray, and Slumdog Millionaire, which really doesn’t count. So China Gate is for me an immersion into an almost totally alien filmic style, made easier by a familiar narrative.

“Our humble tribute to late Akira Kurosawa.”

Director Rajkumar Santoshi is undoubtedly aware of the Japanese masterpiece which informs China Gate. As this version is basically a contemporary-set Indian western – a Curry Western, the term goes – there is also, unacknowledged, as much relationship to The Magnificent Seven. Oh, and reading a little about Indian film history, one discovers the original Indian western, Sholay, from 1975, which also borrowed from those previous sources. It is not, however, a Seven Samurai remake, as it is equally influenced by unrelated westerns such as Once Upon a Time in the West and The Wild Bunch. So when China Gate premiered in 1998, Indian critics were somewhat harsh on it for being an antiquated copy of Sholay, stylistically, with little to say on its own. I’m at a loss here, but I’ve got something new for my Netflix queue.

Directorially, one can still recognize certain overused tricks, which lose their value with repetition – tricks like silhouetted horsemen, Peckinpah-esque slow motion, ham-fisted symbolic reference to vultures again and again.


But there’s a world of conversation in picking apart China Gate’s tone and style, and let’s first set the stage. The village of Devdurg, out in a desert region of India I cannot identify, is under repeated violent assault from the bandit Jagira (Mukesh Tiwari). As we are talkin’ violent, a celebration of decapitations and eviscerations to rival Vlad the Impaler. Not that China Gate shall be persistently vicious, for its tonal strangeness.

A woman from the village seeks aid from Colonel Krishnakant Puri (Om Puri, seemingly one of the major Bollywood stars). Actually, we see this first, before even a narrated flashback reveals Jagira’s villainies. China Gate is equally efficient in assembling the team of heroes Krishnakant shall lead, as it’s done with a single nigh incomprehensible montage, and suddenly we’re beset with eleven – eleven – leads all at once. Also a dog.

These are some major upsets to the standard Seven Samurai scenario, as seen in basically all other variations. The speed of team assembly, which eliminates the recruiting section – usually the most fun portion of these remakes. (Upping the count from 7 to 11 makes little never mind, other than losing many, many characters in the mix.) That’s because China Gate has an agenda far different from its fellows. See, these ten + Krishnakant are all former soldiers, of the Indian army, who were all disgraced and court marshaled over a bungled mission 17 years ago called China Gate – making the inevitable controversy “China Gate Gate.” Ah hah! So the China Gate focus is on their past, their present relationship, with this mission to defend Devdurg an attempt to restore honor.


Now…China Gate is over 3 hours long – it’s the longest of all such exercises, excepting Seven Samurai itself. Having glossed over the first hour and change in under 20 minutes, it expends far more time upon the act of defending the village itself. And unlike Seven Samurai, there really isn’t enough content to justify this length, except for the notion that Bollywood films need length by audience expectations, as film-going in India holds a different social position than it does elsewhere.

The remaining – yikes! – two and a half hours are made up partly of repetitive desert shootout clashes between the Eleven and the bandits. These are never conclusive in any way, and there is no real strategy to it. Never once is defense of the village a true concern. Instead, the Eleven just occasionally shoot at the bandits, and vice versa, with the Eleven always triumphing (and bandits riding off) entirely due to their status as good guys. This fits in with the broad populist notions India apparently employs, but it renders China Gate a rather mindless adventure film with certain aims at Indiana Jones-style greatness.


As long as I’m critiquing the action styling of China Gate, let’s talk the heroes. I’ve not yet distinguished them – the only one who stands out to a Westerner’s eyes is second-in-command Colonel Kewal Krishan Puri (yeah, they’re all called Puri, which probably means something). He is officially the greatest badass in the bunch, because actor Amrish Puri (Puri!!!) is a known entity – he played Mola Ram in Temple of Doom! Whoo! Hence, I only thought of his chubby, mustachioed soldier as “Mola Ram” throughout the pic, hopelessly awaiting an eventual heart removal which never came.

Anyway, this particular Puri has fattened up a bit since his days of ‘80s villainy. All the heroes are little chubsters, which is perhaps appropriate as they’re all aging men seeking redemption. Eh, except apparently all Indian action heroes are the same – the nation seems to celebrate the pudgy, slow, middle-aged man above all else, something noted in this marvelous Cracked article. (Also this one.) My various Indian friends (I go to a tech school) attest this is true, yet the female Bollywood starlets are basically all the Hindi equivalent of Megan Fox – i.e. young, hot, but dumb as gerbils. Apparently, one may only attain celebrity in India by dancing all good like, and Indian dances apparently favor female voluptuousness and male rotundness. Ah, the double standard!

Not that China Gate’s action should all be a shallow, misread aping of old Spaghetti Westerns and early Michael Bay…as that same Cracked article proves.

Getting back to topic, I’m not wholly sure what China Gate is going for. It seems intent to replicate the mood of Seven Samurai, despite the changes. And that mood is one of utmost seriousness, even in an adventure tale populated with successful moments of comedy and levity. Actually, Seven Samurai is a brilliant example of how comic relief can work in a non-comic work. China Gate doesn’t understand that balance. It attempts, for all its seriousness, as much tonal variety as any great epic, yet…each tone is conveyed as obviously as possible.


For China Gate’s comic relief: If something “funny” is happening, the soundtrack will over insist, with “wacky,” “zany,” “lunatic” noises and splats, done with unsubtlety even Benny Hill would scoff at. This is helpful, as nothing on screen is ever apparently a joke, at least not legible as such abroad…Except for the moment where I inappropriately laughed at a cow, which was probably wrong.

As for the drama: Eh, let’s call it melodrama instead. Again, the soundtrack is responsible for overselling this too, but let’s give some credit to the actors. Many beat their chests, quiver their voices, and let the tears flow freely, any time something remotely dramatic/serious goes on. Hell, the first meeting between the Eleven has more hand-wringing forced sorrow than you’ll find in the whole of your average Oscar bait. They’re sort of peaking early, as they’re already at 11 (in the Spinal Tap sense, not the “eleven guys in this movie” sense), with nowhere to go but repeat this same thing every time dramatics return. And there is great disparity between a good performer like Mola Ram and the lesser players, apparently trained in the styles of bad silent cinema vaudeville.

As for action: Well…soundtrack! Really, that thing is damned manipulative. Imagine what Hans Zimmer was putting out in 1998; then imagine an Indian copycat of that. Not effective.


Moving off China Gate topic, it shouldn’t be too surprising that Indian genre fare is dominated by shallow imitations of more wholly competent filmic styles. Their popular film stories create utterly random mishmashes of (usually) American movies, with no real sense or art. So, I’m told, we have the movie where E.T. must defeat an evil Spider-Man (citation needed). What irks me about this, having chatted re: films with my Indian pals, is that they now cannot distinguish between the proper, well done Iron Man film, and something done on 1/50th the budget and with dance numbers.

I am acting protective of our blockbusters which I feel do have some value beyond profit. This creates an air of cinematic stagnation, where audiences genuinely disregard the value of, say, Star Wars because they’ve already seen their knockoff, so why bother? But these are the audiences which would never give a black & white, foreign language flick like Seven Samurai a chance in the first place, so it’s just as well they received their local version.


And, sadly, like many a remake of a foreign film, China Gate intends to replace Seven Samurai in local minds as much as The Ring was meant to completely supersede Ringu in the U.S. And back to that notion of seriousness. Santoshi wishes to fashion something as human, as grand, though it’s clear the competence is not wholly there – not Santoshi’s fault perhaps so much as local conditions. If the cast attests, the acting is not up to snuff, not enough for dramatic consistency amongst the players. Tone cannot be established genuinely, meaning China Gate rather oversells its hand to make a point. And for a viewer schooled to embrace the more subdued pleasures of the original Samurai, this makes China Gate a very interminable slog of never-changing scenes and techniques. Shootout, montage, dramatic argument, romantic interlude, shootout, montage, you follow.


But the surest evidence of serious intent, in a Bollywood pic, is a near refusal to kowtow to that holiest of Bollywood traditions – the musical. China Gate was conceived as that rarest of things: a Hindi picture completely without songs! That’d be like releasing a Batman movie without Batman. But as all but the first of my screen caps can attest (Indian DVDs do not agree with my computer), that is not what happened. There is a musical number in China Gate, one which starts shortly into the third hour, which totally catches you off guard. It is easily the best part of the movie.

And here it is, in full.



That’s “Chama Chama,” an Indian pop song performed by Urmila (at least she dances to it; the vocals are somebody else). She is another major celebrity in the Bollywood firmament, and her eleventh (as it were) hour addition to China Gate assured some box office success. That, for all this scene’s wonderfulness, is a testament to how compromised China Gate is, how no Indian film can surpass the local cheesy requirements. Still, most of China Gate’s fame comes from “Chama Chama,” which was even featured in Moulin Rouge! Here, proof.


This dance has no place in China Gate, and isn’t even a substitute for a sex scene, as dances oft are. It just happens with a single edit totally out of the blue. And if my Indian chums are to be believed, this’d be the stage where theater audiences take to the aisles and themselves recklessly dance all about. Wow, it’s an entire nation of midnight Rocky Horror screenings!

My focus veers towards “Chama Chama,” as does everyone’s, because it is so much more successful than the rest of China Gate, done admittedly in a bit of a sub-MTV filmic style, but with a certain uncommon confidence. And China Gate wasn’t cheap! It’s sort of the Indian equivalent of its contemporary Titanic, in terms of running ridiculously over any previous industry budget. Ah, but China Gate went the way we thought Titanic would go, proving only mildly successful to a disinterested audience. It turns out Bollywood boosters were not ready for a relatively self-serious affair, even if it has that tonal lumpiness which seems to define the industry. And viewers outside of India had no need for a falsely artful movie, like if Dan Brown tried to write at the level of James Joyce.

*************************************************************


China Gate may be the final feature length film to officially remake Seven Samurai, but there’s more to this exploration even now. We travel back to Japan for the 50 year anniversary of Seven Samurai, 2004, to find among the celebrations the first Japanese reworking of what was originally a Japanese work. “Samurai 7” is an anime retelling of the Kurosawa story, and in certain ways it is the most respectful adaptation. Many scenes of dialogue appear directly out of the original, and the story follows the same beats quite faithfully…to a point. See, “Samurai 7” is a TV show (hence it falls outside of this blog’s primary purview), so it stretches the 3.5 hour narrative even further, into a mighty 26 episodes – we’re talkin’ one episode per member of the group, and then some. And owing to its animated status, “Samurai 7” takes advantage of its medium, filling feudal Japan with a steam punk mélange of robots, spaceships, whatever else an insane imagination can dream up. I am partway through this series, watching it even though it won’t get treated here.

It’d be nice to claim the final Seven Samurai effort as belonging to Japan, and for the immediate time being it is. Rather distressingly, the Weinstein Company has long been discussing the possibility of doing another American Seven Samurai remake. What’s enraging about this isn’t the concept, seeing as we’ve already seen The Magnificent Seven, Kill a Dragon, and about 7 other similar efforts. But all with enough decency to claim their own names. Weinstein’s villainous droogs seem intent to maintain the Seven Samurai name itself, in a complete lack of respect for the source material, same as the long-threatened Rashomon remake. (Which already got its own western remake, The Outrage, as nearly no Kurosawa samurai epic can avoid a western remake – See also Yojimbo as A Fistful of Dollars, and The Hidden Fortress as…Star Wars?! Wow! [Okay, I already knew that one.])

What’s especially idiotic about this looming possible remake isn’t just its mere existence, but some specifics. In order to “contemporalize” it (why why why?!), it’ll be set not in the past, and not in Japan, for who cares about that? Nah, it’ll be about modern mercenaries rescuing a village in war-torn Burma…Wait, I’ve seen this movie! It was called Rambo – the fourth Rambo, that is, the one actually named that. Which means, yes, Rambo is another example of the Seven Samurai template reappearing in action cinema. Rambo is not a remake, not officially (besides, I gotta save the Rambo franchise for another day). It just goes to show ya how hugely important Seven Samurai has been already, and how foolish it is to try co-opting that name.


RELATED POSTS:
• No. 1 Seven Samurai (1954)
• No. 2 The Magnificent Seven (1960)
• No. 3 Kill a Dragon (1967)
• Nos. 4 - 8 (1979 - 1993)

The Magnificent Seven, No. 4 - The Magnificent Seven Ride (1972)

The western underwent a brief but vibrant revisionist period in the early to mid ‘70s, just before a lengthy hibernation period. “The western is dead,” these movies proclaimed, “long live the western!” This is a time when even the mighty Spaghetti Western was on its Italian way out, and those which remained questioned their forebears.

A brief detour (already?!): Westerns traditionally are defined by a very narrow setting, the untamed American West. Amongst film genres, this is perhaps the most limiting. With increasing distance from the historic setting, there is less and less relevance in the western as historical fiction. Its codes have been adopted by other forms, with many modern action films utilizing old western language – it’s what it evolved into. I’m thinking e.g. of Die Hard. In fact, as the western loses its historical importance, it gains tonal importance, becoming closer to forms like comedy, drama, etc. Codes remain, notions of freedom, heroism, honor, lawlessness, violence, applicable to any story in a frontier setting, up to and including outer space. Hence No Country for Old Men is a western, in a contemporary setting; looking backwards, the old Kurosawa samurai epics are westerns, though they predate that era.

Anyway, back to the ‘70s. In the death spasms of the traditional western, a great number of revisionist efforts pulled the form this way and that: McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Jeremiah Johnson, High Plains Drifter, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, El Topo, so very many more. This was the environment of the final Magnificent Seven sequel, The Magnificent Seven Ride!, part of a series that was always more classical than revisionist. Such an effort would be even more anachronistic in 1972 than Guns of the Magnificent Seven was in 1969. For this reason it is a good thing Ride! appears in a minor revisionist mode, consciously closing the book on the Magnificent Seven saga by questioning many of that franchise’s rules.

One awkward through-line in all the Magnificent Sevens is the question of “Why do they fight?” This has grown increasingly overt in the sequels. Rather than continue to plug in that shoehorned notion, Ride! changes the mode of inquiry: “What if they didn’t fight?”


As ever, the connective tissue which makes Ride! part of a series are as following: Elmer Bernstein’s eternally kickass score, the number 7, and gunslinger Chris Adams. Once again, Chris is recast, now played by verifiable legend Lee Van Cleef – second only to Clint Eastwood, another veteran of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly just as Eli Wallach was in the first Magnificent Seven. Due to thoroughly unclear contract stipulations, Van Cleef here plays a role originated by Yul Brynner, while Brynner takes Van Cleef’s headlining role in the second of the Sabata trilogy, Adiós, Sabata.

It’s tough to think of Van Cleef’s “Chris” as Brynner’s “Chris,” so it helps just to think of him as his own man. It’s not like the series ever made him more than an enigma anyway, a leader three times over of seven-man posses. That history is enough to inform Van Cleef’s version, an older Chris anxious to forget his adventurous past. Retirement for such a roustabout involves acting as U.S. Marshall in an Arizona frontier town, and enjoying honest-to-goodness marriage to his wife Arilla (Mariette Hartley, from TV). And when Chris’ former friend (whom we’ve never seen before) Jim Mackay (Ralph Waite, from TV) arrives with a request that Chris join him to defend a Mexican border village under attack by a renegade band of 50 banditos…Chris refuses. Good thing, too, since there would be absolutely zero series variation had he gone.

This may be called The Magnificent Seven, but the first half is almost completely devoted to Chris alone. As a reticent frontier legend in his autumn years, Chris enjoys the company of a biographer named Noah Forbes (Michael Callan, from TV). This is a familiar revisionist tactic, a self-conscious examination of myth, so well utilized in Unforgiven. And under the corrective gaze of Mrs. Adams (i.e. Arilla), Chris hopes to uncharacteristically embrace the beatific halls of nonviolence. To this end, he releases 18-year-old robber Shelley Donavan (Ron Stein, from TV). This turns out to be a mistake, as Shelley “celebrates” his release by seriously wounding Chris, robbing a bank, and running off with Arilla. How many other movies can you name that are this quick in condemning nonviolence?!

Chris rides out to capture Shelley, accompanied by Noah. This major plot thread, which has nothing directly to do with the standard “Seven” setup, is a result of the greater thought process which caused Chris to reject his latest adventure in the first place. Things are about to get much worse for Chris. They find (well, Noah finds) Arilla raped and murdered, in that order, early along Shelley’s trail. Now it’s a revenge flick! Chris, violating all Noah’s ill-conceived notions of honor, tracks down Shelley’s partners-in-rape – which includes a frighteningly young, shaggy, be-mulleted Gary Busey. Chris learns where Shelley has gone…then kills them! In cold blood! No one does that like Van Cleef.


The trail leads the duo (a duo?! In a Magnificent Seven?!) along past Kirk’s Rock to “Mexico,” where Jim and the men of Magdalena (Jim’s town) ready an ambush for the bandits. Ah hah, the old thread returns! Shelley has joined this bandit band, headed by the dreaded and forever unseen Juan De Toro. Chris advises Jim that, without Chris’ help, their potential ambush is instead a suicide mission. And still Chris refuses to aid Jim, considering it fruitless in this predicament, and rides on in hopes to somehow find Shelley some other way.

Gunfire quickly brings Chris and Noah back to the sight of Jim’s ambush, which has itself been ambushed, Shelley specifically having sold these men out to De Toro. All this death, all a result of Chris’ decisions so far. That’s not all! Shelley is dead at Jim’s hands, and vice versa. So even the potential for Chris’ selfish revenge is gone.


Chris doesn’t learn this immediately, as instead he first travels to Magdalena to search for the missing Jim. Instead he finds the town ravaged by De Toro’s forces, which have already moved on to spread their message of thoughtless violence and cruelty to Texas – which could surely benefit from it. In De Toro’s wake are the town’s women and children, and hints (first subtle, then…er, less so) indicates that the former were raped – 17 women to 40 or 50 Mexicans. That is to say, repeatedly. And what’s amazing is this isn’t even among the more nihilistic of revisionist westerns!


Chris starts a relationship of mutual recovery with Laurie Gunn (Stefanie Powers, from TV), newly a widow just as Chris is newly a widower. To leap ahead a tad, it’s not surprising that romance springs up between these two. What is surprising is how inevitable and necessary this romance is, because Chris’ story has gone from one of apathy to revenge and now to redemption. Which is a lot of work to justify Chris’ actions in the second half of the story, but it gives the eventual climax far more context than Guns of the Magnificent Seven could ever wish for.

Even with De Toro et al long gone, their return is nigh, as De Toro intends a second rape spree as he returns from violently decimating Texas. In other words, Magdalena needs defense even now, after Chris has failed to defend it. Intent to do them right by any means necessary, Chris (and Noah) heads out collect five more men, to together create the titularly-necessitated seven.

I’d expended much effort up ‘til now incorrectly trying to identify the eventual Seven. Well, when the Seven do appear, they’re mostly entirely new, whom we’ve never seen before. For The Magnificent Seven Ride! “borrows” ideas from The Dirty Dozen (itself a variation on The Magnificent Seven), namely that the gunmen are culled from the local prison population. This is a sudden dump of heroes, but we must forego the traditional recruitment montage in favor of a stronger storyline for Chris.


With that in light, there isn’t humongous effort put into distinguishing these five newbies…though their little character moments still make them as distinct as those in Guns. It’s okay, since they’re in essence a group character, five prisoners allied against Chris. In answer to the eternal question “Why do they fight?,” Ride! suggests these warriors have little choice. Chris promises his team parole should they succeed, in true Dirty Dozen fashion. And should Chris die beforehand – that is, should they kill Chris in retaliation for imprisoning them – then, well, no parole! That still leaves open the question of what they’ll do once in Mexico, where they’d be free of the U.S. penal system, but we’ll get to that. Chris assures us (through Noah) that it’s under control.

Meanwhile, I guess we’d best give the five a cursory glance…Hmm, we got Pepe Carral (Pedro Armendariz Jr., from TV), Walt Drummond (William Lucking, from TV), Captain Andy Hayes (James Sikking, from, yup), Scott Elliott (Ed Lauter, from TV), and Mark Skinner (Luke Askew, from…well I’ll be, Easy Rider).

The idea now is for these men to secure and defend Magdalena from the inevitable incursion of rape-hungry banditos. Because this is an action movie, there must be a simpler early mission to attend to, and verily Chris has arranged one. With De Toro off spreading his Mexican apocalypse throughout the Lone Star State, Chris et al descend upon De Toro’s lightly-guarded headquarters, for weapons. And at this stage, Ride! marks itself out as a surprisingly thoughtful franchise closer, exclamation point excepted. In marked contrast to Guns, Ride!’s warriors do not simply ride in without hesitation. Rather, they carefully plan their assault, working out tactics with a forethought not oft seen with murderous bounty hunter types. What follows is a pretty good shootout, all things told, with certain caveats to be covered at the end.


The battle concludes with Chris ensuring his men’s loyalty, no matter what. He steals the real prize, De Toro’s unnamed woman, and sends a single messenger off to tell De Toro that he and his assorted associates have taken her back to Magdalena for a characteristic and systematic raping. Chris isn’t that cold, of course, but it guarantees his prisoners’ allegiance, as the only way to escape De Toro’s wrath in Mexico is to kill De Toro. Very clever of Chris, very clever in general, this is a much more thoughtful Seven than most. I like this movie!


With a surprising minimum of plot arbitration, we’re now at the expected Magnificent Seven scenario: Seven guys defending a helpless town from invasion. Even at this late stage, The Magnificent Seven Ride! distinguishes itself from the lesser sequels by being surprisingly smart about it. Strategy again becomes the central focus, second only to Seven Samurai itself. The Seven work out a specific, detailed ambush involving several outer trenches, traps, explosives, and rifles of assorted ranges. Actually, this nicely answers one question even the mighty Magnificent Seven avoided: How does one adapt the Seven Samurai defensive strategy to gun warfare?

The limited running time is nearing an end. Yet even with the scramble to fortify Magdalena, there’s time for genuinely involving character scenes, as the Seven and the town’s women all make heartfelt connections, each of them damaged and broken and tired by their difficult lives. Credit for this goes to screenwriter Arthur Rowe (from TV), who thoughtfully provides the Magnificent Seven deliverables with a lot of unexpected meat.

Credit, however, probably does not lie with director George McCowan (ditto from TV), and here we come to my major caveat. Consider the background of nearly every member of the film, excepting the omnipotent Van Cleef…That’s right, The Magnificent Seven Ride! has all the earmarks of a made-for-TV movie, including budget-conscious off-the-shelf western sets, an overdependence upon Vasquez Rocks, and a distractingly static camera. The end result is eons better than most television movies, in terms of sheer spectacle, and that’s including the best examples of that defunct format, such as Duel or Brian’s Song or The Day After. Given the progressive devolution of quality with former Magnificent Seven sequels, this is a necessary budgetary fallout.

Actually, considering how horribly crippled The Magnificent Seven Ride! was in its mere conception, an unwanted third sequel to an outdated western remake of a Japanese art house effort, it is far better than it has any right to be. Perhaps with those lowered expectations, it had the freedom to move away from the “sequel as remake” trap the other sequel Sevens succumbed to. At any rate, Ride! is a respectful follow-up, actively deconstructing and reconstructing the formula and delivering some mighty fun western action. If you have the capacity to forgive some less-than-stellar technical merits, The Magnificent Seven Ride! has a lot to offer.


Thus did the Magnificent Seven film franchise come to a close in 1972, somewhat parallel to the western genre as a whole. But recall how unlikely it is for a western to have three sequels to begin with, in the non-sequelizing climate of cinematic oaters. Most western serialization belongs to television, and did even prior to The Magnificent Seven. So it’s no great surprise that what little life was left in the Magnificent Seven name found its outlet on television.

“The Magnificent Seven” aired on CBS – ah, so that’s why I’ve never heard of it! It was a Michael Biehn vehicle, and really he’s not a bad choice to play a leader of divergent badasses (see also Aliens). Being a TV show, “The Magnificent Seven” told mostly isolated adventures, like the old “Gunsmoke” and “Rawhide.” The classic story of the seven ridding a town of bandits is reduced to the two-part pilot, which is a shame when one considers how a newer TV show might stretch that notion out into an entire season – as length and patience benefits Seven Samurai, so might it in this format. It wasn’t to be, though, and “The Magnificent Seven” ran it its serialized form for two seasons, from 1998 to 2000.

This evidently concludes the legacy of The Magnificent Seven. But it was just one of many movies owing their existence to Seven Samurai. Appropriately, seven more official remakes await us (many unfindable and thus unwatchable), and we shall see just how malleable this “men defend village” concept really is.


RELATED POSTS:
• No. 1 The Magnificent Seven (1960)
• No. 3 Guns of the Magnificent Seven (1969)

The Magnificent Seven, No. 4 - The Magnificent Seven Ride (1972)

The western underwent a brief but vibrant revisionist period in the early to mid ‘70s, just before a lengthy hibernation period. “The western is dead,” these movies proclaimed, “long live the western!” This is a time when even the mighty Spaghetti Western was on its Italian way out, and those which remained questioned their forebears.

A brief detour (already?!): Westerns traditionally are defined by a very narrow setting, the untamed American West. Amongst film genres, this is perhaps the most limiting. With increasing distance from the historic setting, there is less and less relevance in the western as historical fiction. Its codes have been adopted by other forms, with many modern action films utilizing old western language – it’s what it evolved into. I’m thinking e.g. of Die Hard. In fact, as the western loses its historical importance, it gains tonal importance, becoming closer to forms like comedy, drama, etc. Codes remain, notions of freedom, heroism, honor, lawlessness, violence, applicable to any story in a frontier setting, up to and including outer space. Hence No Country for Old Men is a western, in a contemporary setting; looking backwards, the old Kurosawa samurai epics are westerns, though they predate that era.

Anyway, back to the ‘70s. In the death spasms of the traditional western, a great number of revisionist efforts pulled the form this way and that: McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Jeremiah Johnson, High Plains Drifter, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, El Topo, so very many more. This was the environment of the final Magnificent Seven sequel, The Magnificent Seven Ride!, part of a series that was always more classical than revisionist. Such an effort would be even more anachronistic in 1972 than Guns of the Magnificent Seven was in 1969. For this reason it is a good thing Ride! appears in a minor revisionist mode, consciously closing the book on the Magnificent Seven saga by questioning many of that franchise’s rules.

One awkward through-line in all the Magnificent Sevens is the question of “Why do they fight?” This has grown increasingly overt in the sequels. Rather than continue to plug in that shoehorned notion, Ride! changes the mode of inquiry: “What if they didn’t fight?”


As ever, the connective tissue which makes Ride! part of a series are as following: Elmer Bernstein’s eternally kickass score, the number 7, and gunslinger Chris Adams. Once again, Chris is recast, now played by verifiable legend Lee Van Cleef – second only to Clint Eastwood, another veteran of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly just as Eli Wallach was in the first Magnificent Seven. Due to thoroughly unclear contract stipulations, Van Cleef here plays a role originated by Yul Brynner, while Brynner takes Van Cleef’s headlining role in the second of the Sabata trilogy, Adiós, Sabata.

It’s tough to think of Van Cleef’s “Chris” as Brynner’s “Chris,” so it helps just to think of him as his own man. It’s not like the series ever made him more than an enigma anyway, a leader three times over of seven-man posses. That history is enough to inform Van Cleef’s version, an older Chris anxious to forget his adventurous past. Retirement for such a roustabout involves acting as U.S. Marshall in an Arizona frontier town, and enjoying honest-to-goodness marriage to his wife Arilla (Mariette Hartley, from TV). And when Chris’ former friend (whom we’ve never seen before) Jim Mackay (Ralph Waite, from TV) arrives with a request that Chris join him to defend a Mexican border village under attack by a renegade band of 50 banditos…Chris refuses. Good thing, too, since there would be absolutely zero series variation had he gone.

This may be called The Magnificent Seven, but the first half is almost completely devoted to Chris alone. As a reticent frontier legend in his autumn years, Chris enjoys the company of a biographer named Noah Forbes (Michael Callan, from TV). This is a familiar revisionist tactic, a self-conscious examination of myth, so well utilized in Unforgiven. And under the corrective gaze of Mrs. Adams (i.e. Arilla), Chris hopes to uncharacteristically embrace the beatific halls of nonviolence. To this end, he releases 18-year-old robber Shelley Donavan (Ron Stein, from TV). This turns out to be a mistake, as Shelley “celebrates” his release by seriously wounding Chris, robbing a bank, and running off with Arilla. How many other movies can you name that are this quick in condemning nonviolence?!

Chris rides out to capture Shelley, accompanied by Noah. This major plot thread, which has nothing directly to do with the standard “Seven” setup, is a result of the greater thought process which caused Chris to reject his latest adventure in the first place. Things are about to get much worse for Chris. They find (well, Noah finds) Arilla raped and murdered, in that order, early along Shelley’s trail. Now it’s a revenge flick! Chris, violating all Noah’s ill-conceived notions of honor, tracks down Shelley’s partners-in-rape – which includes a frighteningly young, shaggy, be-mulleted Gary Busey. Chris learns where Shelley has gone…then kills them! In cold blood! No one does that like Van Cleef.


The trail leads the duo (a duo?! In a Magnificent Seven?!) along past Kirk’s Rock to “Mexico,” where Jim and the men of Magdalena (Jim’s town) ready an ambush for the bandits. Ah hah, the old thread returns! Shelley has joined this bandit band, headed by the dreaded and forever unseen Juan De Toro. Chris advises Jim that, without Chris’ help, their potential ambush is instead a suicide mission. And still Chris refuses to aid Jim, considering it fruitless in this predicament, and rides on in hopes to somehow find Shelley some other way.

Gunfire quickly brings Chris and Noah back to the sight of Jim’s ambush, which has itself been ambushed, Shelley specifically having sold these men out to De Toro. All this death, all a result of Chris’ decisions so far. That’s not all! Shelley is dead at Jim’s hands, and vice versa. So even the potential for Chris’ selfish revenge is gone.


Chris doesn’t learn this immediately, as instead he first travels to Magdalena to search for the missing Jim. Instead he finds the town ravaged by De Toro’s forces, which have already moved on to spread their message of thoughtless violence and cruelty to Texas – which could surely benefit from it. In De Toro’s wake are the town’s women and children, and hints (first subtle, then…er, less so) indicates that the former were raped – 17 women to 40 or 50 Mexicans. That is to say, repeatedly. And what’s amazing is this isn’t even among the more nihilistic of revisionist westerns!


Chris starts a relationship of mutual recovery with Laurie Gunn (Stefanie Powers, from TV), newly a widow just as Chris is newly a widower. To leap ahead a tad, it’s not surprising that romance springs up between these two. What is surprising is how inevitable and necessary this romance is, because Chris’ story has gone from one of apathy to revenge and now to redemption. Which is a lot of work to justify Chris’ actions in the second half of the story, but it gives the eventual climax far more context than Guns of the Magnificent Seven could ever wish for.

Even with De Toro et al long gone, their return is nigh, as De Toro intends a second rape spree as he returns from violently decimating Texas. In other words, Magdalena needs defense even now, after Chris has failed to defend it. Intent to do them right by any means necessary, Chris (and Noah) heads out collect five more men, to together create the titularly-necessitated seven.

I’d expended much effort up ‘til now incorrectly trying to identify the eventual Seven. Well, when the Seven do appear, they’re mostly entirely new, whom we’ve never seen before. For The Magnificent Seven Ride! “borrows” ideas from The Dirty Dozen (itself a variation on The Magnificent Seven), namely that the gunmen are culled from the local prison population. This is a sudden dump of heroes, but we must forego the traditional recruitment montage in favor of a stronger storyline for Chris.


With that in light, there isn’t humongous effort put into distinguishing these five newbies…though their little character moments still make them as distinct as those in Guns. It’s okay, since they’re in essence a group character, five prisoners allied against Chris. In answer to the eternal question “Why do they fight?,” Ride! suggests these warriors have little choice. Chris promises his team parole should they succeed, in true Dirty Dozen fashion. And should Chris die beforehand – that is, should they kill Chris in retaliation for imprisoning them – then, well, no parole! That still leaves open the question of what they’ll do once in Mexico, where they’d be free of the U.S. penal system, but we’ll get to that. Chris assures us (through Noah) that it’s under control.

Meanwhile, I guess we’d best give the five a cursory glance…Hmm, we got Pepe Carral (Pedro Armendariz Jr., from TV), Walt Drummond (William Lucking, from TV), Captain Andy Hayes (James Sikking, from, yup), Scott Elliott (Ed Lauter, from TV), and Mark Skinner (Luke Askew, from…well I’ll be, Easy Rider).

The idea now is for these men to secure and defend Magdalena from the inevitable incursion of rape-hungry banditos. Because this is an action movie, there must be a simpler early mission to attend to, and verily Chris has arranged one. With De Toro off spreading his Mexican apocalypse throughout the Lone Star State, Chris et al descend upon De Toro’s lightly-guarded headquarters, for weapons. And at this stage, Ride! marks itself out as a surprisingly thoughtful franchise closer, exclamation point excepted. In marked contrast to Guns, Ride!’s warriors do not simply ride in without hesitation. Rather, they carefully plan their assault, working out tactics with a forethought not oft seen with murderous bounty hunter types. What follows is a pretty good shootout, all things told, with certain caveats to be covered at the end.


The battle concludes with Chris ensuring his men’s loyalty, no matter what. He steals the real prize, De Toro’s unnamed woman, and sends a single messenger off to tell De Toro that he and his assorted associates have taken her back to Magdalena for a characteristic and systematic raping. Chris isn’t that cold, of course, but it guarantees his prisoners’ allegiance, as the only way to escape De Toro’s wrath in Mexico is to kill De Toro. Very clever of Chris, very clever in general, this is a much more thoughtful Seven than most. I like this movie!


With a surprising minimum of plot arbitration, we’re now at the expected Magnificent Seven scenario: Seven guys defending a helpless town from invasion. Even at this late stage, The Magnificent Seven Ride! distinguishes itself from the lesser sequels by being surprisingly smart about it. Strategy again becomes the central focus, second only to Seven Samurai itself. The Seven work out a specific, detailed ambush involving several outer trenches, traps, explosives, and rifles of assorted ranges. Actually, this nicely answers one question even the mighty Magnificent Seven avoided: How does one adapt the Seven Samurai defensive strategy to gun warfare?

The limited running time is nearing an end. Yet even with the scramble to fortify Magdalena, there’s time for genuinely involving character scenes, as the Seven and the town’s women all make heartfelt connections, each of them damaged and broken and tired by their difficult lives. Credit for this goes to screenwriter Arthur Rowe (from TV), who thoughtfully provides the Magnificent Seven deliverables with a lot of unexpected meat.

Credit, however, probably does not lie with director George McCowan (ditto from TV), and here we come to my major caveat. Consider the background of nearly every member of the film, excepting the omnipotent Van Cleef…That’s right, The Magnificent Seven Ride! has all the earmarks of a made-for-TV movie, including budget-conscious off-the-shelf western sets, an overdependence upon Vasquez Rocks, and a distractingly static camera. The end result is eons better than most television movies, in terms of sheer spectacle, and that’s including the best examples of that defunct format, such as Duel or Brian’s Song or The Day After. Given the progressive devolution of quality with former Magnificent Seven sequels, this is a necessary budgetary fallout.

Actually, considering how horribly crippled The Magnificent Seven Ride! was in its mere conception, an unwanted third sequel to an outdated western remake of a Japanese art house effort, it is far better than it has any right to be. Perhaps with those lowered expectations, it had the freedom to move away from the “sequel as remake” trap the other sequel Sevens succumbed to. At any rate, Ride! is a respectful follow-up, actively deconstructing and reconstructing the formula and delivering some mighty fun western action. If you have the capacity to forgive some less-than-stellar technical merits, The Magnificent Seven Ride! has a lot to offer.


Thus did the Magnificent Seven film franchise come to a close in 1972, somewhat parallel to the western genre as a whole. But recall how unlikely it is for a western to have three sequels to begin with, in the non-sequelizing climate of cinematic oaters. Most western serialization belongs to television, and did even prior to The Magnificent Seven. So it’s no great surprise that what little life was left in the Magnificent Seven name found its outlet on television.

“The Magnificent Seven” aired on CBS – ah, so that’s why I’ve never heard of it! It was a Michael Biehn vehicle, and really he’s not a bad choice to play a leader of divergent badasses (see also Aliens). Being a TV show, “The Magnificent Seven” told mostly isolated adventures, like the old “Gunsmoke” and “Rawhide.” The classic story of the seven ridding a town of bandits is reduced to the two-part pilot, which is a shame when one considers how a newer TV show might stretch that notion out into an entire season – as length and patience benefits Seven Samurai, so might it in this format. It wasn’t to be, though, and “The Magnificent Seven” ran it its serialized form for two seasons, from 1998 to 2000.

This evidently concludes the legacy of The Magnificent Seven. But it was just one of many movies owing their existence to Seven Samurai. Appropriately, seven more official remakes await us (many unfindable and thus unwatchable), and we shall see just how malleable this “men defend village” concept really is.


RELATED POSTS:
• No. 1 The Magnificent Seven (1960)
• No. 3 Guns of the Magnificent Seven (1969)

The Magnificent Seven, No. 3 - Guns of the Magnificent Seven (1969)

Westerns don’t normally have sequels, at least ignoring the pre-Stagecoach matinee franchises like The Three Mesquiteers and The Range Busters. Why is that? Most end with some adventurer riding into the sunset, promising to defend all those in need. That seems like the perfect framework for many more isolated struggles to come. Perhaps the western’s status as a morality play prevents that, as continuation can destroy the perfect whole of such a symbolic narrative. And maybe it’s also because westerns were being “sequelized,” in a sense, but on TV series like “Rawhide” and “Branded” and lookie here, Wikipedia lists a full 174 TV westerns!

This was the state of things for most westerns in the ‘50s and ‘60s, no matter how popular. Besides, it’s easier to simply brand someone like John Wayne, without the label of “franchise,” as John Ford famously did. Amongst the classical westerns (that is, pre-Spaghetti), The Magnificent Seven is the only one I know of with any sequels…it has three. This is perhaps because it jumpstarted a new action subgenre, even as it delivered classic western tropes. The ensemble “man on a mission” movie grew up from The Magnificent Seven, often numerically upping the ante: Ocean’s Eleven, The Dirty Dozen, One Hundred and One Dalmatians…okay, not the last one. And when subgenres emerge, often the codifier work creates follow-ups, to compete with its offspring.

Director John Sturges did just that, in 1963, with The Great Escape, a riveting WWII entertainment which brings back a huge percentage of The Magnificent Seven’s cast – Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, James Coburn.


That wasn’t a sequel…not by any standards. That, instead, came out in 1966, as Return of the Seven. Never mind most of the cast, including most of the valuable cast, died in the first, you can’t call it Return of the Last Two Guys. Besides, while Yul Brynner stayed on as the lead, Chris Adams, costar Steve McQueen wanted no part in this project. Rumors vary as to why, if McQueen hated the script, or hated Brynner, or if he was just too awesome now on the eve of Bullitt and The Thomas Crown Affair. At any rate, McQueen’s Vin is recast, now Robert Fuller.

Actually, everyone who’s not Brynner is recast, including that other surviving “Seven,” Chico. (Geez, that sounds like a Marx Bros. sentence!) We’re also Sturgesless, Burt Kennedy fulfilling the role of director with mere passable competence, nothing more (to look at his resume of middling westerns). Not that I can say with certainty, for Return of the Seven’s reputation is apparently dire enough for it to join this blog’s ignominious ranks of “unwatched” movies.

Either way, the story sounds like purest sequel hokum – You know, awkwardly rejigger the end of Part One so as to allow the same exact story to happen again. This means the same Mexican village is beset upon by different bandits, now numbering 50 (escalation!), and Chico is captured with them, to be put into slave labor. Ah, but he escapes, as he, Chris and Vin get about recruiting four new gunmen, almost entirely because the number seven is titularly important, and they’re apparently doomed to run through this narrative time and again.

It’ll take a viewing of the second sequel, Guns of the Magnificent Seven, to determine if that’s truly the case…


Well…it is and it isn’t. Explicit, idiotic continuity like the exact same village are gone, as Guns apparently does the common Part Three thing of correcting for the first sequel’s formula miscalculations. See also Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and Die Hard with a Vengeance, for recycling the right traits Part Two forgot. Of course, Guns of the Magnificent Seven still subscribes to the endless notion of “sequels as in-continuity remakes,” which makes this, unofficially, a bastardized, third generation remake of Seven Samurai, whether it even knows that. For the central plot thread remains e’er the same: Seven warriors amass to fight for the poor and impoverished. The exact same recruitment sequence follows, only with a new batch of seven (just as in Part Two), justifying the stylistic repetition.

So many steps removed from the original, Japanese version which had a point, much of the fundamental humanity of the Seven’s quest gets lost. There are attempts at drama, but such attempts feel shoehorned in out of necessity. The real interest of Guns is simple formula experimentation, to see how, structurally, things change with variation.

Most significantly is the Seven’s quest, which is not defense as in Seven Samurai or The Magnificent Seven (I cannot speak for Return of the Seven), but offense: To break into a maximum security prison and rescue a high profile prisoner. Yes, now the Magnificent Seven franchise is aping its apers (that glorious ouroboros one finds with subgenres), retelling the Where Eagles Dare story in the Mexican Revolution.


Yes, so very many westerns invoke the Mexican Revolution, a transparent guise to add on some pap about “freedom” and “the people” and whatnot. Partly, this is because that lends a western an “epic” feel when simple cowpokes vs. homesteaders won’t do. More likely, it’s because a great many Spaghetti Westerns (i.e. Italian westerns, and yes, those are often the best sort) were filmed in Spain, and the Spaniards look like Mexicans if you squint hard enough (as Clint Eastwood is wont to do). Guns, though a Hollywood production, utilizes the Spanish deserts (as did Part Two), making it something of a Spaghetti Western.

Tonally, Guns seems desirous to take on the pulpy, exaggerated contours of a Spaghetti Western (I’m thinkin’ more Django than For a Few Dollars More), which doesn’t jibe well with that classical Hollywood western feel Guns inherits from its own Magnificent Seven. By 1969 standards, Guns feels somewhat anachronistic, like an old guard relic struggling to remain relevant. Add to that the simultaneous explosion of darker, post-classical Hollywood westerns, epitomized by Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch. The western was becoming as dark and cynical as most cinema moving into the ‘70s, and Guns can only make a token show of following that trend.


Not that it’d completely work even in the classical mode, assuming somehow this was put out in ‘60 instead of ’69 (that is, if this were to replace The Magnificent Seven). The cast, the entire cast is new, not even Yul Brynner remaining. Oh, Chris Adams remains, for we need something to keep this specifically within the franchise, and not just Generic Western With, Coincidentally Enough, Seven Guys. Leading an emaciated macho cast, late enough in the game that no major stars are interested in the genre, is George Kennedy – the only instantly recognizable face. Paradoxically, I know him best as the strapping, ridiculously muscular beast in Cool Hand Luke, and the fat, aging, put-upon police captain in The Naked Gun. Neither of which really gives Kennedy the necessary iconography to play Chris. Besides, the man is literally a redneck, as the picture attests.

And now…the rest of the Seven:

Second-in-command: Keno (Monte Markham, TV star – that’s how far we’ve fallen), a horse thief. Actually, this late in the “men on a mission” cycle, there’s no longer a point in giving your team personalities, per say. Instead, they all have “specialties,” novelty forms of machismo which combine together once the job is underway. Keno, thus, is defined completely by that “horse thief” title, which doesn’t ultimately amount to much. So like many a second-in-command, the ostensibly important Keno is rarely ever around.

The young, naïve one: Maximiliano O’Leary (Reni Santoni, most famous as a minor character from Dirty Harry). Because it’s so hard rounding out a complete seven each time, Max actually fulfills the standard “villager” role – the man who hires gunmen to do his dirty work. He’s added to Chris’ team, why the hell not, under the bizarre notion that they just gotta have seven guys, simply because series rules dictate so. As the sequels go on, this really starts to feel arbitrary and awkward.


The old one, coming back for “one final big score”: James Whitmore as Levi. He also happens to be the knife specialist. Hey, guys, don’t load up all your novelty traits onto one guy!

Explosives: Cassie (Bernie Casey). I hate it when characters are (almost) named after their actors. In what half-way qualifies as progressive by 1969 standards, Cassie is the first non-white to join the Seven – though honestly nowadays we’d expect a little diversity in our teams, excepting the all-Jew Basterds. Being black is apparently enough of a “personality” for Cassie. Oh, and guess which one dies first! Yup, the cliché is healthy and strong in this ancient production.

Actually, they handle Cassie’s minority status with remarkable tactlessness. Being black is directly equated with being deformed, disabled, an “other.” That’s because Cassie is paired up with an actual cripple, the one-armed trick shot artist. That’d be Slater (Joe Don Baker, who I do recognize – by name at least – for playing a fat, fat man in three separate Bond films…when your “macho” cast is famous for being fat, you know you’re in trouble).

Then there’s the “other one,” P.J. (Scott Thomas), whose entire personality is “wears a black outfit.” By some less informed notions of the western, I guess they thought it was revolutionary to put a good guy in black, then give him the desultory romantic subplot I’m not going to address further. They ought to have tried harder.


The specifics of the Seven’s task: Free one Quintero from the vile Colonel Diego, in the strongest Federale prison in all of Mexico. Quintero can then, presumably, lead his rebel forces to victory, something he’d clearly not been able to do prior to his opening capture. Look, just go with it, there’s a prison to be broken into, a pretty classic “heist” style setup, so let’s just concern ourselves with the logistics, shall we.

A good movie of this sort would commence with a lengthy “scoping it out” section, detailing the intricate, unstoppable defenses of the prison, setting up specific mini-tasks for the Seven to overcome, you know the drill. I’m thinking of an Ocean’s Eleven sort of scenario, though today it’s easiest to refer to how Inception did it (minus, of course, the dream thing). This seems to be beyond the powers of lowly director Paul Wendkos, whose fame comes from directing the Gidget movies. Oh boy!

No, the “scoping it out” routine is boiled down simply to Chris wandering on up to the prison, and outright asking a guard about its defenses. And the guard tells him! Then Chris strolls away again, successful only because he is white, and therefore apparently trustworthy. Boy, that was anticlimactic.


Instead, the lengthy, draggy remainder of the Second Act must tread water as the Seven interact with various revolutionaries, have assorted go-nowhere character scenes, and otherwise waste time. Of note, perhaps, is how Guns attempts to create drama 1/100th of what The Magnificent Seven put out, which was itself maybe 1/20th of Seven Samurai’s output. For here the series-old question of “Why did they pick this job?” isn’t just outright stated (as in Magnificent Seven), but even answered. That’s some poor dramatics there, as it removes all meaty ambiguity from your project. Instead, Chris simply announces he did it initially for the money (a whopping $100, up 5x from The Magnificent Seven’s reward), but now doesn’t want the money because he loves the rebels. This is that whole weird American western obsession with celebrating the Mexican Revolution, without ever invoking its messy politics. Chris pretty much gets the Han Solo arc, only played in crayon, and with no Wookies.


That nonsense out of the way, the Seven can proceed with their assault upon the prison, preplanning or no. Let me sum up their strategy in a nutshell first, then get into details…

Just a full-on, balls-out attack!...By seven guys…

That is why there was no careful planning section, there was no careful planning. There’s a little bit of a preliminary involving the Seven sneaking into train carts so they can get close to the prison, which we’ve already seen is completely not a problem for them, so this is just filler. And even when they get to the prison, any need for cleverness is negated by the fact that they suddenly have a whole bunch of expendable Mexicans to do their dirty work. I think there might be a little unacknowledged racism at play in this movie.

A tactless assault is appropriate for a western, and I even excused similar tactics at the climax of The Magnificent Seven. But it’s usually just so disengaging for an audience, since they know the good guys must win by default. No need for subtleties; if you’re the hero, just do whatever you damn well please, and it’ll work out. I mean, sure, many of the Seven do die in this moronic effort – I hope it was worth it for $100! Actually, the same four die as have in all previous versions of this story. That is, survival is limited to Chris (to carry on the franchise), the naïve one (to justify his growth arc), and the other one with an identifiable arc (in this case, Levi of all people – because he has a family to go back to). As far as sequels go, this degree of regimentation severely limits tension, forcing us to focus upon the little details instead.

Anyway, of those details, for that’s the one place where Guns might now distinguish itself… In keeping with its contemporary Wild Bunch, use of a ridiculously big machine gun figures prominently into this chaotic melee. Now, The Wild Bunch is a fantastically violent picture, playing its gunplay up for maximum carnage, and using a very Kurosawa slow motion. It’s a critique upon the thoughtless, bloodless, easy butchery in classical westerns. Now, Guns pretty much resembles what The Wild Bunch was railing against. Little of what transpires here has any impact, beyond a shrugged off “Oh, well, I guess that guy’s dead now, eh.” Actually, that goes for all the violence in Guns of the Magnificent Seven, which is plentiful (most of it comes courtesy of the strangely kill-happy Colonel, whom they’re struggling to paint as an irredeemable monster when he just seems an overzealous, under-effective bad guy).

And of course the cavalry of revolutionaries arrives once the majority of the climax has passed, to break into the prison on their own, meaning…there was no point in the Seven doing any of this! And it’s not the Seven Samurai ending, an intentional dramatization of pointlessness. It’s actually pointless!


Chris bids the rebels farewell, because the genre (and franchise) dictate precisely how these things must end. Because everything thus far in this Seven cycle includes a capper quote, here’s George Kennedy’s:

“The cowards die many deaths. The brave only one.”

I think I saw that in a fortune cookie once.

Then our “heroes” ride off into the sunset, and it’s a sign of how underperforming Guns is that they can’t even successfully deliver this classic image. Otherwise, I would’ve capped it, instead of showing George Kennedy’s sunburned mug again.

Guns of the Magnificent Seven delivers lowered thrills. It’s clear this thing played to more specialized audiences than the universally loved Magnificent Seven. Indeed, the western as a whole was undergoing substantial changes in 1969. Newly lifted restrictions allowed violence and cynicism to, which was actually (contrary to popular opinion) already pretty danged cynical in the celebrated John Ford mode (I mean, what you seen The Searchers lately?). Actually, the whole late history of the western seems like a continual effort to undercut the presumed wholesomeness and contradictions of the classical-style westerns. No matter its wishes, Guns of the Magnificent Seven plays in the antiquated mode. With hindsight, it’s obvious now there was no more room for that, that the western of the ‘70s would be dominated by bleaker Clint Eastwood-directed efforts, ceding the popular box office it enjoyed once.

The death of the western is actually a fascinating subject to me, as it’s one of the few “major” genres which seem so cyclical (the other being the musical). Is it even a genre, like action or horror or comedy? Likely not, as a “western” demands a specific time and place. It is a contextual genre, not a tonal genre. That is, it’s free to mix with setting-independent styles, to be a drama, tragedy, thriller, you name it. Most post-modern westerns are about the western as a movement, and that includes the rare modern holdouts like the Coens’ recent True Grit and No Country for Old Men. Guns of the Magnificent Seven hardly fits into this broader late-stage discussion, except as an example of why the average western is no longer viable. But maybe I’m jumping the six shooter with this diatribe, for there’s one more Magnificent movie ahead, hailing from 1972…when things were far more dire.


RELATED POSTS:
• No. 1 The Magnificent Seven (1960)
• No. 4 The Magnificent Seven Ride! (1972)
(see also Seven Samurai)