THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN - What's the word I'm looking for? Oh yes - fantastic!

If you are going to steal, steal from the best I always say. A Fist Full of Dollars? Kurosawa. Magnificent Seven? Kurosawa. Star Wars? Kurosawa. In fact the influence of Kurosawa sensei runs so deep through Hollywood that it's impact is bloody well incalculable.

Stop me if you've heard this story before: a poor village is besieged by a group of bandits who takes their food and anything else they need or want. The villagers are willing to fight, but lack weapons or training. To compensate for this deficiency, several farmers head to the other side of the border, where they set about finding help. The gunfighter they first encounter agrees to help, and find some hired guns to stop the bandits.

Recruiting a colorful band of characters - including the hard as nails (yet soft on the inside) vet, the green and eager kid, the laconic loner who speaks very little, and the man who has lost his nerve and is trying to regain it - these seven warriors for hire must face down an enemy ten times their number!

Yeah, that summary could be Battle Beyond the Stars, Dune Warriors, Return of Scorpion, or in today's example: the Magnificent Seven, one of the best western movies ever committed to film.

I don&#146t throw around such pronouncements lightly - but there you go. Man With No Name trilogy not withstanding, The Magnificent Seven is the biggest, best example of the genre ever, better than High Noon, better than The Wild Bunch, Unforgiven, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Quick and the Dead and Blazing Saddles. Period, full stop, end of story.

The cast is amazing. Yul Brynner was at the height of his powers, fresh from The King and I, and not yet doing low budget drive-in schlock like Westworld yet. Steve McQueen wasn&#146t famous - yet - but he shows off mad acting skilz. Want to see why he got big? Watch this movie. Of course, we can't forget James Coburn or Charles Bronson were fantastic as always - Bronson hadn&#146t slipped into doing his Death Wish money grab yet, and Coburn is good in anything he touches. Robert Vaughn gets some great moments and even the fairly unknown Horst Buchholz - probably the weakest link of this Magnificent cast - gets some good stuff to work with. While this is the Yul and Steve show, the rest of the cast carry themselves well too.

Of course it has been said that you judge a man by the quality of his enemies, and if that's the case, I judge the seven to be Magnificent! Eli Wallach does a superb job of playing Calvera with far more than just your one not bad guy that you usually get in these things. Flamboyant, nasty, dirty and intelligent - not something you usually get with a villain of this vintage.

The story is nice and tight - as one would expect when adapting Kurosawa and John Sturges has a nice eye for directing, using the fantastic (sorry - Magnificent) landscape to great effect. And the score - while not quite, in my mind, as good as Ennio Morricone's work, still rocks the house with a big, bold and heroic score. Elmer Bernstein does some great memorable work here. And the action, while the movie takes it's time setting everything up, once the hot lead starts flying, you cant take your eyes away. The pacing is . .. well, Magnificent.

Sorry, I'll stop now.

So - memorable characters with a top notch cast and a great story. I fail to see how this movie isn&#146t a classic in every sense of the word.

THE DVD -
We get an amazing looking anamorphic transfer from MGM - a great failing on some of their older titles. The colors are rich and the picture is bright and clear, with no print damage that I could see. The sound leaves me wanting though - I had to turn the home theater up a bit further than where I normally set it to and wasn&#146t blown out of the room. I guess a lot of that is probably due to the age of the source elements, so what you doing to do?

THE EXTRAS -
I'm usually down on MGM for their budget discs, where we're lucky if we get a trailer. Fortunately we score big here. In addition to a pair of anamorphic trailers, we get a commentary from producer Walter Mirisch, actors Eli Wallach and James Coburn, and assistant director Robert E. Relyea. Then there's the documentary Guns for Hire: The Making of The Magnificent Seven, a 46-minute thorough look at how the film was made and about remaking Seven Samurai with interviews from most of the surviving cast. Then we get a photo gallery, and a handful of production notes in a insert. Very nicely done, MGM - well played.

THE BOTTOM LINE -
While this might seem like blasphemy, but I think the Magnificent Seven is a stronger film than Seven Samurai. Now, now - put the pitchforks down and let me explain. Seven Samurai is an all time, untouchable classic - but it is a very, very long film. Magnificent Seven takes that four hours, trims away all the fat, and leaves behind a unbelievably tight story that is free of any padding or slow bits. For that reason alone, I think that the American remake edges out the Japanese just slightly.