Cinema: Yul Team

Return of the Seven has plenty of action, nearly all of it generated by seven men working their jaws. Their conversation takes place in a Mexican village, where Yul Brynner and half a dozen unstable gun fighters fling up the barricades and begin intensive sessions of group therapy. At least it sounds that way. According to the plot, they are supposed to be fighting off a horde of bandits to protect 300 ignorant farmers who are being herded across the desert as slave labor to rebuild the local padre’s church.

Between attacks, Yul and his boys talk a lot about killin’. Some like, some don’t. One claims that “it gets inside of you.” Another has suicidal urges, and a couple of the gunmen frankly prefer fooling around with women. Gradually it becomes clear that Seven is a ludicrous reprise of The Magnificent Seven (1960), which, in turn, was a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s magnificent, often profound 1954 drama about a septet of chivalrous samurai in late feudal Japan. Only holdover from Hollywood’s previous Seven is Brynner, repeating his role as ringleader with the bald-faced boredom of an hombre who knows he has strapped his saddle to a dead horse. The movie can claim one minuscule distinction: it provides the first serious acting role for Pop Singer Jordan Christopher, who married well but otherwise seems unlikely to follow in Richard Burton’s footsteps.