The Magnificent Seven, review: A rousing, full-blooded affair that takes a while to reach full gallop

'The sheer brilliance of these latter scenes justify this new version of an old favourite and shows us just why westerns are still worth making'

Deadly cool: Denzel Washington does his Yul Brynner thing

Dir: Antoine Fuqua, 132 mins, starring: Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt, Ethan Hawke, Vincent D'Onofrio, Byung-Hun Lee

It takes a small eternity to build up momentum but once it is at full gallop, Antoine Fuqua's new version of The Magnificent Seven is a rousing, full-blooded affair. In particular, its prolonged final reel shootout is brilliantly orchestrated, bravura filmmaking that atones for the longueurs that precede it.

This is a traditional Western without anachronisms or Tarantinoesque in-jokes. The characters, dialogue and situations aren't just familiar from the original John Sturges 1960 version, but from countless other Westerns ranging from Shane to The Wild Bunch, from Sergio Leone’s A Fistful Of Dollars to High Noon and Heaven’s Gate.

If it is derivative, so were most of its predecessors. You don’t generally come to Westerns expecting originality. It is worth remembering that the Sturges movie was itself inspired by Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai and that Kurosawa himself was influenced in his work, especially Yojimbo, by Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest. (As if to acknowledge the levels of borrowing and bastardisation, one of the protagonists here is actually called Red Harvest.) Disappointingly though, one element that isn’t used until the end credits is Elmer Bernstein’s music for the Sturges film.

The main character here is bounty hunter Sam Chisolm, played by Denzel Washington. Just like Yul Brynner, he dresses in black and is laconic and understated in the extreme. Washington has clearly practised his six-shooter drill, coolly and dexterously twirling his gun around his finger.

The film opens with the main villain, Bartholomew Bogue (Peter Sarsgaard), marching into a church and intimidating the settlers in the small prairie community of Rose Creek. He wants them off the land and will pay a non-negotiable $20 for “each parcel of dust” that they own. If anyone demurs, he’ll have them killed. Bogue is a robber baron who, he says, stands for capitalism, democracy and progress.

We’re in a world in which there is dirt and dust everywhere. Even when they are playing cards in the saloon, the gunslingers are covered in sweat and grime. A young widow (Haley Bennett) implores Chisolm to help the Rose Creek folk fight back against Bogue. “You don’t need a bounty hunter, you need an army,” he tells her but agrees to help anyway. He has his own reasons for doing so, which very slowly become apparent.

Chisolm’s recruitment drive is the most pedestrian part of the movie. Josh Farraday (Chris Pratt) is a wisecracking, gun-toting card sharp. Presumably on the grounds that Pratt is a major box office draw, the Farraday character is given plenty of screen time early on. This is the equivalent to the Steve McQueen role.

Pratt plays it in his usual genial fashion but there’s no sense of tension between him and Washington as there was between McQueen and Brynner in the original movie. (McQueen shamelessly tried to steal every scene in which he appeared. Pratt doesn’t try to undermine his co-star in quite the same way.)

After Farraday is signed up, the rest of the gang is assembled. Here things sag rather. Each new recruit gets a few moments to show off their special skill set. Ethan Hawke’s Goodnight Robicheaux is a dapper but traumatised civil war veteran who’s an expert marksman with a rifle. His sidekick Billy Rocks (Lee Byung-hun) is so fast and adept with knives that he doesn’t even need guns.

Vincent D’Onofrio’s Jack Horn is a Falstaff-like trapper who can survive being battered on the head with a rock without any noticeable ill effects. Manuel Garcia-Rulfo plays a sleek and deadly Mexican outlaw and Martin Sensmeier is the Comanche who also joins Chisolm, seemingly on the grounds that they both enjoy eating the raw, steaming innards of slaughtered deer.

The bonding between the desperados doesn’t make especially compelling viewing. As in the recent blockbuster Suicide Squad, there are just too many principal characters and the film can’t do justice to them all. It doesn’t help, either, that we know exactly how the plot is going to unfold. They’re heading to Rose Creek where, inevitably, they will eventually have to take on the full might of Bogue’s forces.

They’ll need the help of the locals to stand any chance. These are farming folk, more accustomed to handling pitchforks than guns. The seven give them a crash course in how to fight.

For much of the early part of the film, it seems as if Fuqua is simply going through the motions and you’re not quite sure why he is remaking the film. It seems more an act of homage than a meaningful reinvention of the original material. The final battle, though, is tremendous. What’s especially refreshing is that this is a big budget action movie that doesn’t seem to rely entirely on CGI.

There are exhilarating horseback stunts that rekindle memories of Yakima Canutt in old John Ford movies, moody, widescreen close-ups in the spirit of Sergio Leone, explosions, knife fights and the inevitable appearance of a Gatling gun. Amid all the mayhem, Fuqua manages to keep sight of the individual characters and to advance the plot. There’s also gallows humour and pathos amid the violence.

The sheer brilliance of these latter scenes justify this new version of an old favourite and shows us just why Westerns are still worth making.