Must Go
“I seek righteousness. But I’ll take revenge.” Hayley (Emma Bennett)
My best takeaway quote in the movie came from Sam Chisolm (Denzel Washington), opining on the consequences of the Civil War and refusing to look back – “What we lost in the fire, we’ll find in the ashes”
The 1960 original (run time 2 hours 8 minutes), directed by John Sturges was itself a remake/reimagining of one of the greatest films ever made: Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai – 1954 (run time 3 hours 27 minutes). Both are must-see’s for any movie lover. Given the technical advancements in filmmaking over the past 50-60 years, it only makes sense that director Antoine Fuqua (Southpaw, Training Day) would go bigger, faster, louder. What he can’t do is match the cool factor of Steve McQueen, Yul Brenner, James Coburn, Charles Bronson, or of course, Toshiro Mifune.
Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt, and Ethan Hawke, are all great but I still must give the edge to Vincent D’Onofrio (Jack Horne) as my favorite character. I was delighted to see him in here as I always loved him on “Criminal Intent”. His role of a huge gutsy mountain man, who is at the same time very devoted to the lord, stays memorable for me. Also one of the finest comedic moments – “was that a bear in a man’s clothing?”.
She who must be obeyed is a HUGE cowboy film fan, so we sat through both previous films before going to this. It was worth every minute of the 2 hour 13 minute run time.
Don’t do that! It is 7 hours 48 minutes. Just go see this movie.
Spoiler Alert: each movie ends with the same last shot of four graves.