Mr. Washington’s latest, “The Magnificent Seven,” is a remake of a remake that’s as fresh as recycled recycling suggests. Its principal source is the 1960 film of the same title about a septet of hired American guns protecting a Mexican village. She’s sassy, but some messes a gal can’t clean up alone, so she hires the gunslingers, beginning with Mr. Washington’s bounty hunter, Chisolm. Mr. Washington is, to state the overobvious, a great star, which means that he has that ineluctable what’s-it for selling the goods no matter what their sell-by date. Mr. Washington’s hero — because he’s a black man and especially a black man in a genre historically defined by white men routing nonwhite men — is inherently more complex than Brynner’s was.

Source: New York Times September 22, 2016 09:04 UTC