It's the bank holiday weekend again, and this weekend I'm going for a classic Hollywood western, The Magnificent Seven - the 1960 film directed by John Sturges, which is a remake of Akira Kurosawa's 1954 film, The Seven Samurai.
A Mexican village near the border is being targeted by the bandit Calvera, played by Eli Wallach, and the villagers seek to end this by hiring Chris Adams, a seasoned "Cajun" gunfighter played by Yul Brynner. Chris recruits six other gunfighters to help them: Steve McQueen as the smart-mouthed drifter Vin; Brad Dexter as the fortune-seeking con artist Harry Luck; Bernardo O'Reilly, a cash-strapped bounty hunter played by Charles Bronson; James Coburn as the laconic knife expert Britt; Robert Vaughn as the traumatised veteran Lee; and Horst Buchholz as the hot-blooded wannabe Chico.
When you get down to it, the film is your average western shoot-'em-up, but at the same time, they try to add some depth to it, embodying a philosophy of how society can only be protected from barbarians by men with guns - but if a man picks up a gun, he becomes a barbarian himself. This is discussed several times, and it's clear that many of the seven took the job to still be relevant as society is becoming more settled. It's almost a revisionist view of the wandering gunslinger archetypes even before the Spaghetti Westerns took off - yet it remains an idealistic tale of heroes defending the underdog and triumphing over evil.
And then there was a remake. Because it's the bank holiday, I'll talk about that tomorrow.
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