if you've got 144 minutes to kill, and you want them to go by pleasantly enough, there are worse ways to spend them then to watch The Magnificent Seven . I speak of the recent remake of course, the original is unseen by me, but The Seven Samurai is my jam, so I'm still qualified to say that this is a mostly okay film. The cast if pretty great, but most of them don't really have enough to do (is the pay in America really that much better, Mr.Byung-hun Lee?) , and Denzel has a chance to bury his charisma in a role that seemingly calls for it. Pratt is kind of lousy in this, but the other six guys make up for it by being more engaging than him. I know I'm sounding pretty down on a film that I on balance, enjoyed, but it feels like a whiff. I would imagine even people that enjoy it will still find lots of theoretical improvements to make to it. But what's here is engaging enough, pretty much.musical , well then London Road now exists to answer just what such an ungainly beast would look like. The sheer unconventional-ness of it carries it a long way, and the verbatim transcripts that it turns into unwieldy and inarticulate tunes (most repeated lyric? 'Um' or 'You Know'.) carries it the rest. Its kind of a gimmick, but its a pretty good one, rendering the still drab reality of normal people living through a seemingly dramatic situation. Still though, it does feel a bit padded, even with its brief running time (its about 4.5ifhs of a Magnificent 7), and the songs themselves aren't bad, but don't make quite so much of an impact, which for a musical, which is what this film mostly settles on being, is a slightly serious flaw. I would say its still worth a look though, its the best flawed film I've seen all year.VIDEO
