Synopsis: After a small village in Mexico is terrorized by a gang of bandits the citizens are forced to send 3 of their men to go to the United States to retrieve help in defending their village. After searching for help the get up a team of 7 men who each have their own reasons for doing so. After arriving in the small village they prepare them to fight against the onslaught of 100 member gang!
Review: After so many years of passing up this film I have finally had a chance to view it and now I feel so stupid for passing this one up for far too long. From just 1 viewing this film is definitely in my 10 ten favorite western films of all time. Despite having an awesome story that is pretty much an American version of the 1954 classic "Seven Samurai" it has one of the coolest casts of any western that I have set my eyes on! You get Yul Brynner (Westworld), Steve McQueen (Bullitt), Charles Bronson (Death Wish), Robert Vaughn (Buried Alive), and Eli Wallach (The Good, The Bad and The Ugly) to name a few. All of which bring forth some excellent performances.
Now even though the storyline of this film is on the more serious side they still do add a little bit of subtle humor to ease the tension without making this film into something silly. Now with how I feel about the movie being said I will get onto what everyone reading this really wants to know about and that is the look and sound of this blu-ray release. Well I am happy to say that they cleaned this film up nicely like I figured they would due to the films status as one of the best western films, MGM did a great job with "The Man With No Name Trilogy" on blu-ray so it was only fitting for them to do the same with this one and the other three.
The overall picture on this release is in ways almost perfect and I could tell that they actually took their time and cleaned this film up. All the specs of debris have been removed for the most part and only show up here and there. In other words the print is very clean. One of the best things is that they did not DNR (digital noise reduction) this film up which means the film grain is still intact! Thank you MGM for not making the people in the film look like wax statues like you have done before! Now as far as the sound goes they did a great job with the 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio track which for the most part is flawless and they also added the original English 2.0 Mono to top it off.
Special features for this 50th Anniversary release include: Guns For Hire: The Making of The Magnificent Seven, Elmer Berstein and The Magnificent Seven, The Linen Book: Lost Images from The Magnificent Seven, Original Theatrical Trailers, Still Gallery, and Audio Commentary Featuring James Coburn, Eli Wallach and Walter Mirisch.
Overall this is a great western and an overall great film that I think should be in any film fans collection!
-Daniel "Damnation" Lee
Director: John Sturges
Genre: Western/Action
Blu-Ray Release Year: 2011
Theatrical Release Year: 1960
Time Length: 128 mins.
Company: MGM Home Entertainment
Website:
www.mgm.com
Tech Aspects:
Audio: English 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio, English 2.0 Mono, Spanish 5.1 DD
Aspect ratio: Widescreen 2.35:1
Codec: AVC @ 31 MBPS
Subtitles: English SDH, Spanish, French
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