![the magnificent seven 1960 the magnificent seven 1960](https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mOLLcb9gASc/V-nodV-euDI/AAAAAAACOhU/eVpHabHJ4BgOUT3ZE7z3Ed6X9UzOwxk_gCLcB/s1600/BRAD%2BDEXTER%2B02.jpg)
At the head of the crowd is the eager-beaver hot-headed young Mexican, Chico (Horst Buchholz, in his Hollywood debut), who thinks these guys are quite something-especially when they effortlessly ward off attacks by gunfighters sprinkled all along the way.Īlso very impressed are the three Mexican villagers. They start off up the road, trailed by a small crowd eager to see what’s going to happen. He’s joined by another man, Vin (Steve McQueen), who offers to ride shotgun on the hearse. In the middle of this, a stranger man named Chris (Yul Brynner) steps up, offering to drive the hearse. The problem is that the dead man was an Indian, so most of the townspeople are against having him buried in their cemetery-and nobody’s ready to even drive the hearse there. They’ve barely ridden into town when they come upon a scene charged with tension: two salesmen have come upon a corpse in the street and have paid the undertaker to have the dead man buried. So three men from the village go to the town carrying their little hoard-everything valuable that the villagers possess-so that they can buy guns. One of the men points out that you need money to buy guns, and the old man gives them an old pocket watch, which will probably help get them some of that money. Go to the border town up north in the US and buy guns, he says. This, obviously, can’t go on for long, and the people of the village, after an initial bout of despair/resignation/defiance, go to the wise old man of the village for advice. Furthermore, the bandit chief Calvera (Eli Wallach), instead of snarling from astride his horse as he leads his gang off, sits down in the village, drinking and smoking and silkily telling the frightened villagers that he “loves their village”, while his men systematically pillage the place. The story starts off pretty much like that of Shichi-nin No Samurai, except that in this case, the beleaguered village is in Mexico, not Japan. Thirdly, it was directed by John Sturges, the very capable man behind classic adventure films like Escape from Fort Bravo, The Great Escape, and Ice Station Zebra. Secondly, The Magnificent Seven stars one of my favourite actors, Yul Brynner. Firstly, it’s a Western, a genre I’m usually fond of (as long as it steers clear of the run-of-the-mill formulas that John Wayne acted in during the early 30’s-and which, sadly, continued in a lot of films well past the 30’s). For me, The Magnificent Seven has much to recommend it. After having watched Akira Kurosawa’s brilliant Shichi-nin No Samurai last week, I figured it was time to rewatch this film, which goes so far as to mention that it’s based on Shichi-nin No Samurai.