The inhabitants of a small Mexican village are being bullied by the local bandito, Calvera (Eli Wallach), who swoops in with his 35 henchmen and raids the village once a year, taking all but the barest of their crops and leaving them to nearly starve. They decide to make a stand and go to the border to buy guns, only to discover it is cheaper to buy hired guns to do the dirty work for you.
Here, they meet Chris (Yul Brynner), who seems to be a good man, even in the face of danger. Chris takes on their plight, and sets about rounding up others of his kind, for the measly wage of $20 for six weeks of protection. He first enlists old friend Harry Luck (Brad Dexter), who thinks there must be some big underlying financial score. Then handsome rogue Vin (Steve McQueen) joins the team, followed by knife-throwing extraordinaire Britt (James Coburn), drifter O'Reilly (Charles Bronson), on-the-lam Lee (Robert Vaughn) and finally, young and proud Chico (Horst Buchholz).
Once the team is assembled, they realize they have their work cut out for them in teaching these farmers how to hold a gun. As they fortify the town, word gets out and Calvera comes to pay a visit, only to be run out of town... for a time.
Through trickery, Calvera tricks the Seven into coming after his gang, only to take over the town while they are gone and force them to leave when they return. When the townspeople realize that these seven strangers are willing to risk their own lives to save their village, they rise up against Calvera and defeat him, if only with their machetes and hoes. As the surviving members of the Seven bid farewell, Chico decides to remain in the village with Petra (Rosenda Monteros), the young farm girl he has fallen for.
Based on Akira Kurosawa's legendary film, The Seven Samurai, The Magnificent Seven is filled to capacity with hot young actors of its time, terrific one-liners and a musical score that still stands the test of time, even today. It is the consummate underdog story and it has been remastered and lovingly restored to high-def perfection. Aside from one scene that appeared pixelly, probably due to the haziness of the particular scene, the entire film looks sharp and beautiful. Although the surround sound is good, especially the fantastic soundtrack, it's definitely retro-fitted and you can tell it wasn't surround sound from the get-go. But still, it sounds great.
Special features include a 45-minute making-of that provides a lot of interesting background info that I never knew about the film; a very in-depth featurette on Elmer Bernstein's soundtrack; The Linen Book, which discusses a bevy of lost images from the film; two original trailers; audio commentary with James Coburn, Eli Wallach and Walter Mirisch and finally, a very comprehensive still gallery.
While some of the acting and stunts are a little over the top and it pained me to see the horses falling over on their sides time and again in the very realistic gun fighting scenes, The Magnificent Seven is a classic film of good versus evil and a great way to see lots of famous action stars in a film that launched many of their careers. Highly recommended.
