The Magnificent Seven (1960) - Collector's Edition 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray [4K UHD]- English

I saw this movie, first run, in 1960, in one of my neighborhood theaters...a theater that had an uncanny taste in good movies! And to this day, I'm still spellbound by the fantastic music, the casting, especially of Yul Brynner as the head honcho, and the overall dramatic effect of this landmark film."The Magnificent Seven" started out as a remake of "The Seven Samurai" by Akira Kurasawa, a fact just about everybody who's ever Googled IMDB or read a film history article knows by heart. What you might not have known is that Yul Brynner owned the rights to make it into a western! Brynner, in fact, was slated to direct, at one point, but they got John Sturges instead. Anthony Quinn was originally slated to play Chris, Brynner's character. I really couldn't imagine this movie without Brynner playing Chris, and I thank the gods of fate manipulation that it didn't happen that way.You all know the story, right? Chris rides around the border area searching for gunfighters to help him protect a Mexican village from a menacing group of bandits, led by Eli Wallach (Calveras), and meets up with Steve McQueen as Vin, James Coburn as Britt, Robert Vaughn as Lee, Charles Bronson as O'Reilly, Horst Bucholz as Rico and Brad Dexter as Harry. All these guys are good, with the possible exception of Robert Vaughn, who, it turns out, is the only surviving "hero" from the movie. His character, apparently, was shell-shocked from earlier gunfights, and is fighting demons of cowardice and inadequacy. There was always a character like this in just about every "important" drama of this era and the performances were almost always over the top, and thank Gawd Vaughn's is kept to a minimum. His presence in anything made after "The Man From U.N.C.L.E" was canceled was almost always a sure sign that the movie was a bomb. The man looks like John Derek designed by Al Hirschfeld...Horst Bucholz, who made an international career out of playing Holden Caulfields, does his hotheaded young guy thing here in his inimtable style. Though German, Bucholz only once portrayed a German in any movies of his released here! In "One Hour To Rama", a movie about Gandhi's assassin, he plays a Hindu, sick and tired of British rule. In this film, he plays a young hispanic fellow who wants to join the gaggle of older men to fight the banditos. This he does, while making a fool out of himself when drunk but acquitting himself when he's sober and the chips are down. He's also the one who makes any kind of time with the young ladies of the village.Steve McQueen does his laconic thing, with baleful stares and not much dialogue, and some of the most pointed finger counting you've ever seen as he is Brynner's first, helping to recruit the other fighters. Coburn, who, back then was often mixed up with McQueen by audiences because of their striking visual similarities, plays the knife-wielding expert, who's just as fast with a gun, named Britt. He gets almost NO lines in the film, but one of the most quoted scenes from the film, where Bucholz's Rico is amazed at a shot he made, shooting a bandito off a horse, is one that everybody remembers. As with Flint, he modestly tells Rico that he was aiming "for the horse".Bronson's O'Reilly becomes a favorite of three village boys, as he is the one who teaches the village men how to shoot rifles. And then there's Brynner's Chris. As Chris, Brynner gets all the good lines in the movie...all the philosophical lines, all the good comedic lines, which McQueen or Wallach often set up for him, and nobody has the walk he has...not John Wayne, not Jim Arness, not Alan Ladd, not anybody....If you remember there being a lot more of the score in this movie when you saw it in the theater, you're not alone. I found myself wanting to hear the main refrain played as often as possible and cursed the fact that the movie wasn't shot in glorious stereo, as this score was made for it!One of the things that made this movie so great is the easy camaraderie between the gunslingers as they band together to help the lowly villagers. They exchange sly jokes and the stories of their lives, (or whatever they want to reveal of them,) and if more of them had survived, they would have probably become lifelong friends, but in the end, only two remained...and watching them ride off into the sunset beats Brandon De Wilde calling out to Shane any day of the week!A true classic.

It was great watching this classic as well as the "making of" on this DVD which really clarified why this film was so popular, especially in Europe (of all places).It's a western, of course.A gang of Mexican bandits, about 30 of them, invade a village and demand their tribute. When met with resistance, a bullet in the belly is the villager's reward. What to do? They're just farmers, not hired guns. The elder of the village says go and buy guns![It's interesting, in the "making of" of this film, they had a censor who had to ensure that the Mexican people were not be degraded in this film as they were in an earlier film, Vera Cruz. In the original Japanese film, The Seven Samurai, the Seven were hired. This looked like a degradation, so the censor accepted that the villagers would buy guns, not men. That they did hire men was an afterthought rather than a main plot point of the earlier adaptation.]Two men (played by Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen) overhear a funeral director (played by that guy from Time Tunnel!) lament that he cannot bury an Indian body in the cemetery because he'll get shot at. Apparently the town is so racist that to bury an Indian body into a white cemetery is stating you're an "Indian lover" and could get you shot!After safely getting the funeral wagon to the plot (after much shooting, joking around and a little whiskey to keep ya warm), Brynner (Chris) is confronted by the villagers as to where to get guns, etc. They convey that they're being taken advantage of and want to get rid of this bandito.Throughout the film the question is asked why Chris does this. Is it an honor thing? Certainly not money (20 dollars, even by 1895 standards is cheap). And could be he just likes the thrill of being a hired gun. It's a matter of honor and integrity that the audience is left to ponder.What makes the film great are several themes: The camaraderie of seven men, who separate are pretty good but as a solid team are a force to be reckoned with. This theme has been repeated time and time again, but The Magnificent Seven was the first film to do this successfully. It's been copied since.Another theme is the music! Bernstein's theme is one of the most recognized and even earned an Oscar for that year. [As an aside, the film was not that hot right out of the gate. It was only after its hit in Europe and then its subsequent replay to American audiences that it finally caught on.]Each character gets his scene time. Each has his own problems and these are confronted. And not all the Seven make it out alive. But they all contributed, to a greater or lesser degree, to the successful liberation of the village.And what of the villagers? Some resented being helped. Some resented having their lives complicated. What was the harm in letting this bandito come down and have some food? What a price to pay, freedom?The scene of betrayal was especially poignant with me, really struck a chord. The realistic scenery, the horse & cowboy battles, the realism of the people and their plight, make it clear why this film has been copied, a TV series and several sequels have been made! And the new faces of actors who some would go on to bigger and better things - McQueen and Robert Vaughan as a few.Great "making of" on the DVD. We listen to interviews from the original cast, the controversy of the script (the original scriptwriter did not want a credit), the fear of failure of the film (would it flop?) and so on. Fascinating piece of cinematic history - the last real American western!