Summer movies have fallen so deep into reboot mania that we’re now seeing remakes of reboots, as with director Antoine Fuqua’s forthcoming reimagining of John Sturges’ 1960 remake of Akira Kurosawa’s 1954 epic The Seven Samurai. But even if everything old is new again, that doesn’t mean we can’t derive pleasure from watching Chris Pratt have a field day with some dynamite while brooding hero Denzel Washington rides off into the sunset.
The new Magnificent Seven, which hits theaters Sept. 23, includes, in addition to Pratt and Washington, Ethan Hawke, Vincent D’Onofrio, Byung-hun Lee, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo and Martin Sensmeier, banding together as a team of misfits—a drunken outlaw (Pratt), a Confederate sharpshooter (Hawke), a Comanche warrior (Sensmeier), etc.—who take on the impossible task of thwarting a robber baron’s plans to swallow up a small town in pursuit of his expansionist master plan.
Peter Sarsgaard plays said cold-hearted evildoer and Haley Bennett, who starred in Hardcore Henry, makes a good case for a magnificent eighth as a the town’s staunchest defender and a quick study with a rifle.
