The Magnificent Seven

Biehn's terse, tightly coiled performance and stirring music from Elmer Bernstein's original 1960 score enhance the "Magnificent" mystique. [2 Jan 1998]

The debut is cinematically beautiful, the cast is top-notch, the story is compelling, the characters distinct, the music stirring. The question is, why now? [30 Dec 1997]

Magnificent Seve" can't hold a candle to its cinematic predecessor, or to most of the old TV classics like Gunsmoke. But in a world where all the cowboys rode off into the sunset decades ago, we'll take a watered-down Western just fine, ma'am. [3 Jan 1998]

It's still an unabashed throwback—what folks used to call a shoot-'em-up.

Most of the staples are there: the shootouts, flinty stares, purposeful strides through gunpowder smoke, tobacco spitting and rides into the sunset. What's missing is a little credibility. [2 Jan 1998]

This new "Magnificent Seven" is so far from magnificent, it's almost depressing. ... There's no sense of drama, humor or urgency. [2 Jan 1998]

This low-rent knockoff of the estimable 1960 movie is a sleep--inducing, cliche-choked, rope-a-dopey slowpoke starring a buncha no-names substituting for the likes of Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson and James Coburn. We haven't seen markdowns of this magnitude since Sears fire-saled its entire line of Johnny Miller menswear. [3 Jan 1998]