In ‘Magnificent Seven,’ Heroes Are Believers

As Hollywood seems to run out of its own original ideas, reboots and remakes are an increasingly big part of the release schedule — with “Ghostbusters” and “Ben-Hur” just two classics that were re-imagined this past summer.

Now, MGM is opening its archives again with an intriguing new take on its classic 1960 Western “The Magnificent Seven.”

The new film’s Christian focus is more noticeable.

Unlike the new “Ben-Hur,” whose only big star was Morgan Freeman in a supporting role, the new “Seven” teams up superstars Denzel Washington and Chris Pratt with respected veteran actors Ethan Hawke and Peter Sarsgaard.

Yet like “Ben-Hur,” the new “Seven” has an overt appeal to faith-based audiences due to its own surprisingly strong Christian elements, including a heavy reliance on prayer from not only the townspeople being saved, but among the heroes themselves.

The fact that Washington is the lead hero in a traditional-style Western is drawing attention from some who claim that casting the African-American icon as the lead hero, alongside Asian, Native American, and female actors as fellow heroes on the titular team, is part of typical Hollywood political correctness.

But an actual viewing of the new edition is surprising less for any alleged PC aspects than for the Christian ones.

The casting of a broader range of backgrounds in the new cast comes off as a positive aspect in “Seven,” because Westerns were traditionally the film genre that seemed to use white actors most exclusively. There never seemed to be an attempt during the Western’s heyday to reach out to any other audience demographic, leaving fans and kids of any other background without heroes they could call their own.

Once Mel Brooks’ classic spoof “Blazing Saddles” centered on a black hero — turning Western tropes upside-down, the Western should have become fair game for broader casting — but hardly any were made anymore.

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Aside from some ugly stares from white townspeople and a scowling bartender at the start of the new “Magnificent Seven” — and the final rant he delivers to the villain near the end — the race of Washington’s character Chisholm doesn’t come into play. He’s just a sharp-shooting representative of the law.

And frankly, it’s fun to see the team come together from disparate backgrounds. Those pining for the days of all-white Western casting still have Pratt, Hawke, and a stellar performance by Vincent D’Onofrio holding  the fort, yet director Antoine Fuqua has fashioned a movie that the whole world can now enjoy and relate to — which can only be healthy for this film’s success and revive the genre as a whole.

The new film’s frequent Christian focus is more noticeable, as the film opens with the villainous mining mogul Bartholomew Bogue (Peter Sarsgaard) and his henchmen busting into a small town’s church and  telling the townspeople they have to sell their land for just $20 a parcel or face violent consequences.

When the baddies drive the people out of the church by firing their guns, and then set the house of worship on fire, the movie sets the tone of Bogue being a nemesis whose scenery-chewing is just as over-the-top as the 1960 film’s Calvera, played by Eli Wallach.

The fact that the Jewish Wallach played a Mexican villain in the original “Seven” is a prime reason why sometimes more realistic ethnic casting is a good thing.

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His performance was fun to watch both then and now, yet in the lens of our current times, his casting is somewhat ridiculous. Here, the most PC element actually comes from the portrayal of the villainous Bogue as a ruthless capitalist who delivers a greed-drenched speech early on, stating that capitalism is equal to God Himself, while basically meaning that money is his god.

Throughout the rest of the film, the townspeople rely on prayer, and D’Onofrio’s Jack Horne in particular among the heroes is driven by a righteous fervor to help bring justice to the townspeople. Towards the end, Washington’s Chisholm retreats to the candle-filled church for an intensive quiet moment of prayer, making it unmistakable that the movie’s heroes are believers.

The fact that such prayerfulness and faith are portrayed more strongly in the 2016 edition of the movie than in the original is a sign that some big and positive changes are happening in Hollywood. And that positive portrayal of Christianity is a politically incorrect element that far outweighs any intimations of political correctness in the rest of the movie.