February Film Festival

The Magnificent Seven (MGM, 1960) dir. John Sturges starring Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, Eli Wallach, James Coburn, Charles Bronson, Robert Vaughn, Brad Dexters and Horst Bucholtz. John Sturges, for a sort of short period of time was a truly great and cool director. And it started here with the Mag 7. This was a first Westernization of a Kurosawa Samurai flick, and gave impetus to some ideas that had been kicking around Sergio Leone's head since childhood. Brynner plays Chris, a legendary bad ass, who takes on an impossible assignment and needs to put together a crack team of killers to get the job done. Watching him assemble the team is one of the seminal sequences in cool guy flick history. The 7 end up protecting a town against a local warlord, for no dough, and little glory. This is a great, great movie and it's time to watch it again. You can get it at Amazon.