DAVID BIANCULLI

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THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN
April 27, 2018  | By David Bianculli

TCM, 8:00 p.m. ET

 

This 1960 Western classic, in which a septet of individually formidable mercenaries is hired by a small village to defend them from attack by outside adversaries, is based on the brilliant Japanese film by Akira Kurosawa, Seven Samurai. This broad Americanized (and Mexicanized) Western is very good, but the original film really was magnificent. For The Magnificent 7, the unorthodox heroes are played by such charismatic actors as Steve McQueen, James Coburn, Charles Bronson, Eli Wallach – and Yul Brynner, whose black-garbed gunslinger was so arrestingly memorable here, he was used by writer-director Michael Crichton 13 years later (!) to reprise the role, in robot form, as the out-of-control killing machine in Crichton’s original 1973 version of Westworld.

 
 
 
 
 
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