It isn’t often that I have the opportunity to watch a film in the movie hall with my father. He has no patience for the modern spectacle movies like the superhero ones nor is he into sci-fi, so “A long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away” doesn’t make any sense to him, either. 

So, even if it turned out to be a very bad film, I would be thankful for The Magnificent Seven in that it got me and my father into a movie hall together after ages. The reason? It is a remake of one of our favourite Westerns — a genre I grew up watching, thanks to my dad, who had no “too violent for a six-year-old” filter, like many dads in the ’80s. 

And both my dad and I had a crackerjack of a good time (if you’ve devoured the 1960 original, you’ll know where that came from!). First, we had a great time discussing our all-time favourites — The Good, The Bad, The Ugly, Django, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, True Grit (John Wayne not Jeff Bridges), The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance —while we waited for the movie to start. There could have been a debate about who was our favourite Western hero, but Clint Eastwood was the clear winner. Second, we had fun trying to work out who in the remake played who from the original film. And then we just sat back and enjoyed what was simply a superbly shot, more glossy and better sounding remake of the Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen starrer on the big screen. Don’t judge me. I come from the generation that watched all those Westerns on a hired VCR!

Okay, so I can’t say I loved it. But I can say that I thoroughly enjoyed it. I mean this was tribute to the genre through and through and it even had a couple of dialogues from the original. My father was a bit unhappy about the music — “the theme music was as big a star of the Westerns as the heroes themselves” — which was good, but nothing as signature as the theme music of the John Sturges film. I’ll know that tune anywhere (including some advertisements!) but I can’t say that about the new one.

Coming to the titular septet, you can’t go wrong with Denzel Washington as anything, especially a gun-slinging, stetson-wearing hero. But to be honest, I missed Brynner’s mysteriousness. With Brynner you never knew what he was going to do and I don’t think you always expected him to do the right thing, because you just didn’t know what he was thinking.

But Denzel’s Sam Chisolm is a straight arrow and you never doubt him. The fact that he had a reason for taking the job of protecting Rose Creek (that noose-mark scene was from Clint Eastwood’s Hang ’em High) also took away the aura of mystery. My father didn’t seem to be suffering from the same loss.

While I loved Steve McQueen’s Vin, his modern-remake counterpart — Josh Faraday, played by a charming and funny Chris Pratt — wasn’t too bad either. Chris doesn’t get much wrong these days and him going out in a blaze of glory is all I could ask for. The one I really missed was James Coburn’s Britt. Byung-Hun Lee was good but not as sharp or impactful as Coburn. 

See the really good thing about this film was that unlike the original, where you were really invested in three at the max four of the seven, here you see and connect with all the seven to a certain degree. They get, if not equal, at least their due time on screen. Ethan Hawke (Goodnight Robicheaux is such a great name!) and Vincent D’Onofrio’s characters are two worth a mention as is the chemistry between Ethan and Lee. But I wish there was more of the “bunch of misfits” trying to fit in with each other banter that was there in the first half of the film.

I would have said something about a woman, Hailey Bennett’s Emma Cullen, being the fiesty gun-toting town spokesperson, but she still, like the Westerns of old, is a token presence. 

There are two more things that need to be mentioned — the villain, a chilling Peter Sarsgaard, who I liked so much better than Eli Wallach. And. That. Epic. Gun. Battle! Yes, the body count was stupendous. Yes, it was still bloodless. But it was so beautifully choreographed! And every fallen hero gets a hero’s death. 

My dad and I decided that while we wouldn’t rewatch it, unlike the 1960 original, it was a jolly good way to spend Sunday morning. “Do you think it was less dusty though?” was my father’s last question to me. It was, just as it was a little less on the swagger quotient.