Be Reel Blog Ryan Ryersen

The Mediocre Seven

      The Magnificent Seven is Antoine Fuqua’s latest exposition which surprisingly, added a bonus feature at the very end of the film: an anti-climatic climax. The “magnificent” seven are a team of  static and flat misfit characters located in a late 19th-century frontier mining town. The seven must defeat an army of the antagonist named Bogue a mining tycoon who wishes to exploit this town at the expense of the townspeople. The movie is done in a very typical western fashion full of gun duels, extensive staring, and the “sheriff vs. outlaw” plotline. Perhaps this movies largest flaw is its characterization or lack thereof. The inherent problem with characterization in this film is that there are seven protagonists and not enough time to give each character a sufficient backstory. This lead to the characters being dull and disposable. Very few of the characters were characterized at all and began to seem as if main characters would come and go like it is no big deal. To combat this problem the characters of the seven usually stick to their stereotype in order to give the character some sort of personality based on the viewer’s prior knowledge rather than go into an extensive backstory. For example, the Native American, Red Harvest, speaks an native tribal language, uses bow and arrows, has tribal facial markings, and eats raw venison.(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyqKzYre76o)Fuqua does this in order to save time however this ultimately makes all of the characters boring. This led to a climax where I really didn’t care if the protagonists beat the antagonists and the shock when Bogue unveils [The Weapon] (I won’t spoil what it is) is underwhelming.
The Magnificent Seven tries to upset the typical “white-man” Western movie with cowboys of many nationalities and the leader of the seven being African-American but ultimately Fuqua misses the mark at making any sort of social or political statement. It seemed Fuqua was trying to be different by adding characters with different nationalities in this movie however his argument becomes somewhat counterintuitive because by trying to disproving stereotypes and generalizations of groups of people he re-enforces them with all of the characters stereotypical behavior. Ultimately, any attempt at a political or social statement fell flat.
This movie also has some major timing issues. The exposition is way too long and extraordinary boring. The rising action, after the initial battle, feels like an exposition part two. The  exposition and rising action together make up way too much of the movie as it feels way too drawn out the climax is anti-climatic and the conclusion is mediocre at best.
Hence, this movie received a bad, bad from me. It tries to be original but ultimately ends being extremely unoriginal. Ultimately, this movie is boring and poorly crafted.