The Magnificent Seven: Directed by Antoine Fuqua, Starring: Denzel Washington and Chris Pratt9/29/2016 Antoine Fuqua’s The Magnificent Seven is the best type of likable bad movie. On one hand it’s an unsatisfying character piece with too many people running around (not that this is Fuqua’s or the screenwriters fault), but on the other hand the film embodies the build, if not ever the pacing of Leone's Dollars Trilogy becoming gleefully engrossing over time. It’s not good, but deliriously involving, is the best way to put it. How it gets there is what’s so interesting because as is the flaws are more built into premise then they are built into anything that the actors or the director present. With seven characters and a mandated two hour running time to get the optimum number of shows per day, nobody’s going to get all that much character whatsoever, leading to a problem when you have Seven characters to set up. Despite this, the Seven do actually become somewhat engaging through an almost Coen-esque build of introductions, where each moment is infused with a sense of either gruesome violence or off putting jokes but these don't last too long. The film feels like a typical team up movie, but they left too many of the character spots in the dialogue, rather than the well...character. Then again, the fact that this team is significantly more diverse than your typical team up movie, (looking at you Marvel), the character tension may have intentionally been skimped on to call attention to the subtle racial tensions in the group, but overall it’s not enough. The first hour here is just substandard as the paper-thin, yet wonderfully played characters meet and this section just feels like it needed more room to breathe. Like it needed a 3 hour runtime, and individual introductions like The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. That said, maybe that’s not quite the case because when the final 45 minutes (guesstimating there), of battle actually start to roll, it’s genuinely difficult not to root for every single one of the Seven, and that’s probably because as much as they are non entities, their overall disjointed personalities make for an amusingly human side to the whole team. Sure, not enough is given of each of them, but that doesn’t mean it’s not funny as hell to watch Vincent D'onOfrio, the scariest villain of the Marvel Universe, appear as a mousy voiced, almost helplessly traumatized fighter, or Chris Pratt playing his modern idealistic caricature of a cowboy against the overall darkness of the movie. In fact when the deaths in the group do come (don’t call that a spoiler) the overall sadness of each one of them is too compelling to ignore. There’s also what seems to be a rushed (like everything else) homage to Once Upon a Time in the West that while rushed lands because of Denzel Washington's impecable acting and the late James Horner's and Simon Franglen's compelling score. The one thing that isn’t contradictory in the categories of unsatisfying, yet compelling is the action that Fuqua has set up. This was much the same with last years, overrated, even by me, Southpaw. Fuqua’s western violence explode in moments of actual results to violence that suggest that the age of actually bloody PG-13 films might be coming back. The suspense that builds between each gruesome death is filled up with the ever escalating PG-13 violence deaths which very oddly creates suspense on the side of when the next more violent death will come. The camerawork that Fuqua employs is furious too, absolutely thrilling in every way even as the PG-13 bloodless violence fills the screen. Perspective is a big deal for Fuqua, and those that he employs, like the lone Chris Pratt ducking in a wooden shed backgrounded by a charging army of men on horseback are both beautiful and thrilling in composition. So, is The Magnificent Seven a good movie? No. Is it thrilling and engrossing, and hilarious at times? Yes. Go see it, enjoy a few hours in a crazy cowboy film. The Magnificent Seven gets a 7 out of 10.
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Clint Eastwood’s flat, staged, clean style has not benefited him of late. The cleaned up style worked with the rose color glasses Eastwood presented on WWII, but that was mainly because content wise Flags of Our Fathers revealed a sinister exploitation in such glasses and Letters From Iwo Jima was simply too violent and cruel as to rip off the glasses and smash them on the ground. His style seems to work best when he’s subverting it with something, not just playing it straight, but to many that’s all Sully will be. A flatly composited, small effort that doesn’t seem to have too much at stake. This is not quite the case. Sully, about the “Miracle on the Hudson” aka the landing of a airplane on the Hudson River by Captain “Sully” Sullenberger after losing both engines due to birds slyly gives a reason for Clint Eastwood’s almost fake looking composites. It may seem like a backhanded compliment, but intentionally or not Eastwood has stumbled into yet again subverting his own filmmaking style. The key to breaking down the film is how he has actually done that. The records broken in this review when it comes to the description of Eastwood’s filmmaking style in this film. It’s simply a little awkward and unrealistic, but through narrative layering that actually seems pretty intentional. The film is mainly focussed on the investigation in the aftermath of the crash, which overall doesn’t seem to have that much heft to it. The capable drama to pull out of it is minimal unfortunately as not really all that much of true stakes happened. To anyone who actually knows the results of the investigation the dramatic core of the film would probably be ripped out... if this movie were being played as a straight drama, barring any underlying emotions and simply telling the story. Eastwood hasn’t done this. He’s done something better. It become readily apparent through excellent work of the whole cast, mainly from an almost effortlessly excellent Tom Hanks and Aaron Eckhart, that the aftermath of the Hudson landing is both subtly and unsubtly hazy and dreamy for both Sully and his co pilot (Eckhart). Now this is very easily shown in these big money shot IMAX nightmares that Sully has ie. him crashing the plane into buildings, but it’s also subtly represented in the way that the film stages the aftermath of the event (which is the whole movie) in a way that almost comes off like a miles more serious and subtle version of the parody sitcom in Natural Born Killers, in that the reality that we are witnessing is less true events and more the awkward weirdly skewed dreamlike reality that Sully and his co-pilot having both experienced a near death experience are for the time being stuck in. This stigmatizes the production creating a Rockwellian or even Lynchian tone which becomes the driving dramatic engine for a film that taken simply on it’s own merits would most likely crumble. Honestly, if directed by Spielberg, the film would have achieved a greatness probably in the heart of the character, but this enticing angle might have been lost. As far as the surface material goes Eastwood’s calm creation of the events preceding the crash excellently contrast the adrenaline rush that comes with each time we watch the plane fall from the sky, though this crash never really reaches Flight levels of intensity. Unfortunately, the previously described tone sometimes can’t hold the film up as it continues through such a light story, but for the most part Hanks and the implications of Eastwood’s own subversion of style make Sully certainly worth seeing. Sully gets an 8 out of 10. |
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December 2017
CategoriesAuthorHello welcome to FilmAnalyst. My name is Stephen Tronicek, and I really like movies. This is a way to get my opinions out to people. Thank you for visiting. |