The Magnificent Seven

Director: John Sturges, John Sturges

1960 / 128min / DCP

Sturges’s boots-and-spurs restaging of Akira Kurosawa’s chambara battle royale Seven Samurai moves that film’s action from Sengoku period Japan to Old Mexico, where villagers fed up with cleaning up after constant bandit raids, led by renegade chieftain Eli Wallach, hire themselves some protection: Cajun fast-draw artist Yul Brynner and a half dozen hand-picked hard cases including Steve McQueen, James Coburn, Robert Vaughn, and Charles Bronson. Rather than approaching the assignment as a by-the-numbers remake of the source material, Sturges produced a movie with its own distinct brio and vigor, with Elmer Bernstein’s immensely influential score doing no small part in keeping the energy up.