The Magnificent Seven (2017): Review

• This is a NON-spoiler review for The Magnificent Seven. Go see this movie! I thought this movie was really really awesome. I had a total blast with it. In the last review I did for Sully, I said that Chris Pratt is one my four favorite actors I love equally. So I was really excited to watch him again.

• "What did you think?": I'm going to tell you it is definitely worth your time and this is the movie you should go see this weekend. It's an awesome return of a classic genre. Go see this movie in IMAX for sure.

• IMDB's Plot Summary: "Seven gunmen in the old west gradually come together to help a poor village against savage thieves."

• This movie starts off immediately feeling like a classic western - everything from the dialogue to the music and the sound effects, etc. In the opening of the movie it made you understand why the town needed help and what the bad guys were doing that needed to be stopped.

• But to begin my complaints - I think that we didn't see enough of a town in pain and in need of help. The movie needed to make me care about the town faster and more than I did. I didn't see the pain of the town until later in the movie.

• There were a few predictable scenes. Haley Bennett plays a character named Emma Cullen, who is the one that asks Denzel Washington's character for help. Her acting sometimes was a bit over the top to me. (Am I the only one who thought she looks A LOT like Jennifer Lawrence?) And my biggest complaint of all - the villain. I really found the villain character boring. I thought he was a weak villain - nothing really memorable about him. Too many villains in movies today are forgettable. I never really understood anything about him other than he's just a guy who being a real violent jerk to the town. And that's all my complaints.

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• There were quite a few awesome action scenes. Some great LOUD gun scenes, and I'm not complaining. A lot of moments that left me thinking "dang". A lot of beautiful looking scenery shots. And one thing that I think that was essential to the story - the team. THE Magnificent Seven. The leader was Denzel Washington. This was actually my favorite Denzel role. I'm not a huge fan of Denzel in the first place. He is a very talented actor and I think he does a great job but I haven't seen him in a role that I really liked him. I think he did awesome as a gunslinger.

• Vincent D'Onofrio played a great character. The best way to describe him is he is a bear. He was much more likable in this than in Jurassic World. The character talked really weird which at first I thought was bad acting but later it actually became kinda funny and made the character more likable. I really loved Vincent D'Onofrio's character. There was Byung-hun Lee who played an awesome character who had some awesome knife scenes. I really loved him. Scenes with him were awesome. I feel like the idea for that character came from the line "You're bringing a knife to a gun fight".

• And finally my favorite Chris Pratt - Bert Macklin himself. The first time he came on screen it reminded me of the scene in The LEGO Movie where Emmet (played by Chris Pratt) is dressed as a cowboy and says "Howdy! I'm a cowboy! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Shoot! Shoot! Shoot! Bullet! Bullet! Gun!" I think that Chris Pratt was the most cowboy-ish character in the whole cast. He's a fantastic cowboy. He was very likable and hilarious in the movie, something I really missed in Jurassic World.

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• So the seven as a team I really bought. I liked them as a team better than I liked the Suicide Squad. I thought that all the actors played off each other very well. Especially Denzel Washington and Chris Pratt. I think that the team worked together very well in the battle scenes. Something that I know some people won't like but I think I do like, is that the characters past remain a mystery mostly for the whole movie. It kinda makes it hard to have a compelling character with conflict. They had hints of it but nothing much. I think I like it because it doesn't get in the way of the present time for these characters where it's so much fun to watch them do what they do and the awesome and really funny dialogue between them all. There was a lot of dialogue that feels like it came straight out of a John Wayne western. And in the scenes where the seven are in a battle, the filmmakers did a good job at making me feel like they were outgunned and they really didn't have a chance and that they needed to get creative.

• This movie was a ton of fun. I definitely recommend this movie 100%. Especially in IMAX. Go see this movie, dangit!