The Magnificent Seven (1960) and The Magnificent Seven (2016)

There are a few similarities between the two movies called The Magnificent Seven, one made in 1960 and the new one that opened this weekend. They both tell stories of the American West where seven gunfighters are hired to protect defenseless villagers from marauding bad guys. But that's about it. There is remarkably very little similarity between these two movies. The only overlapping dialog that I can remember is a story that Steve McQueen tells in the original that Chris Pratt also tells in the new movie to explain their situation. A man jumps off a building and as he passes each floor, he is heard to say, "So far, so good, so far, so good." Besides, McQueen and Pratt, some of the others are obvious counterparts to the original cast. Denzel Washington is Yul Brynner, Ethan Hawke is a combination of Robert Vaughn and Brad Dexter, while the new Asian gunfighter played by Byung-hun Lee is James Coburn. They are both pretty Zen and like knives. Manuel Garcia-Rulfo would be Horst Buchholtz since they both play Mexicans. That leaves Charles Bronson and Vincent D'Onofrio as the last matchup. No comment.

The original movie is a remake of The Seven Samurai by Akira Kurosawa, which tells the story of seven Ronin, Samurai with no masters, who are hired to protect a small village from bandits. The 1960 The Magnificent Seven tells the same story with gunslingers hired to protect a small village in Mexico. The seven gunslingers, like the Ronin, are lost and out of work because the West is changing and becoming too civilized. When their characters are introduced, Bronson is chopping wood for his breakfast, and Robert Vaughan is in hiding out in a storeroom. The original has a bittersweet feeling that even as they are protecting the lives of the Mexican farmers, the Seven realize that they have given up any chance of such a normal life and can never experience it themselves. The new The Magnificent Seven isn't such a bad movie but it has nothing to do with The Seven Samurai. This new movie is a western about seven gunslingers hired to protect a town, but it is not The Magnificent Seven. They should have given it a different name. In the new movie, the Seven are all gainfully employed and if not happy, they are certainly not at the end of their strings.

It is impossible perhaps to compare any cast to Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, James Coburn, Charles Bronson, Robert Vaughn, and Eli Wallach who plays the leader of the bandits. And no one moves like Brynner, Coburn, and McQueen, although Denzel Washington comes close. Chris Pratt is always good and Vincent D'Onofrio is always weird. Ethan Hawke is a bit overwrought as Goodnight Robicheaux. He is meant to be a Cajun but doesn't have the accent. His character bears the most resemblance to Vaughn's PTSD gunslinger although Brynner is referred to as "you old Cajun" once in the original.

This new movie was made in 2016, so the Seven are much more diverse. The original had 5 1/2 whites and 1 1/2 Hispanics (Bronson was supposed to be half Mexican and half Irish). The new Seven has one African-American, one Native-American, one Asian, one Mexican, and one Cajun. And although Horst Buchholtz's girlfriend was very feminist for 1890 Mexico in the original, the Seven are hired in the new movie by a gunslinging woman (Haley Bennett) who was widowed by the leader of the bad guys (Peter Sarsgaard).  Sarsgaard leads an army of 100 against the new Seven while Eli Wallach only has 40 banditos. I like Sarsgaard, but Wallach is much, much more entertaining and a smarter bad guy. Not much explanation or comment is made about this diverse group of gunfighters. D'Onofrio's character does hate Native Americans, and there is a scene where Washington is not welcome in a saloon, but they don't really try to deal with this important issue. It's a fantasy I guess. Take a look at the very entertaining western, Silverado, and Danny Glover's character for a much better look at race in the West.

At the end of the original The Magnificent Seven, most of the Seven are dead, along with the bad guys, and a few of the villagers, but life in the village goes on as before. In the new movie, the entire town including the church has been blown up and burned, and many of the townsfolk are dead. It's a holocaust. The end of this movie is more like Aleppo today than the old West. The new movie is watchable and it's always nice to see a Western, but it's a bit flat and without a memorable screenplay. There are lots of good lines in the original. And the new movie has nothing to compare to the early scene where Brynner and McQueen ride shotgun on a hearse. The most important thing missing from the new movie is the stirring and iconic soundtrack by Elmer Bernstein, although it does show up in the end credits. You don't even notice the soundtrack in the new movie. As you may have already guessed, I recommend watching the original 1960 The Magnificent Seven. It's available On Demand. If you've never seen it, you are in for a treat.

Sully

I definitely cry at the movies. Usually, it's near the end of the movie when it is reaching the emotional climax. But, there are some exceptions.  In We Are Marshall, the big emotional scene is only 15 minutes into the movie, and I always start crying at the beginning of Apollo 13 when they are watching the Apollo 11 Moon landing. But the effect of Sully on me was just crazy. I was verklempt from the beginning to the end of this movie. I was in tears during the rescue scenes. I'm sure that some PTSD is still there from 9/11 and I cannot watch planes flying low over New York City without having my heart in my mouth. Whatever it is, Sully taps into something very deep.

As everyone already knows, the story of Sully, tells the story of Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, who made the only safe water landing of a commercial airliner in history. Tom Hanks, who else, plays Sully and Aaron Eckhart plays Jeff Skiles his co-pilot on the flight. Sully is extremely low key except when it isn't. What I mean by that is that the flight itself and the rescue are so emotional, and rather than have those events play out at the beginning or the end of the movie, it is very cleverly interleaved with the events afterward so that you can't really relax at all. Most of the time, Sully is showing the actual flight or a simulation of the flight or Sully's nightmares about the flight. 

All this comes from a great director, Clint Eastwood. I may not agree with his politics, but he can really make a movie. He is 86 years old and is still one of the most productive directors in Hollywood, having made 10 movies in the last decade. Sully is very well done. It is mostly about the NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board) investigation of what happened during the 208 seconds of US Airways Flight 1549 which ran into a flock of birds shortly after takeoff and lost both engines necessitating an emergency landing in the Hudson River. Or did it? The movie makes a big deal out of whether Sully had time to turn the plane around and fly back to LaGuardia. In this, Sully departs from the true facts for dramatic effect. No spoilers, but the NTSB is a bit peeved at how they are portrayed in the movie. You can read about it (Spoiler Alert) here. But the end result is the same. Sully is an f-ing hero. 

Hanks plays Sully much like he played James Lovell in Apollo 13 with an understatement that makes the performance more powerful. Eckhart follows Hanks lead. The real life Sully and Skiles are probably like this, just the kind of guys who you would want piloting your plane. Laura Linney is a bit, ok more than a bit, wasted as Sully's wife. She gets to cry a lot. There are some other familiar faces including Katie Couric playing herself, Anna Gunn (Breaking Bad), Jamey Sheridan (Spotlight), and Michael Rapaport. But Sully is all about Sully and the landing in the Hudson. I don't know who else could have played Sully other than Tom Hanks. Go see it and bring a box of Kleenex.