"They were seven - And they fought like seven hundred!"

The Magnificent Seven is the transitional western from those old John Wayne, John Ford movies to the more modern ones. Within a few years after it's release in 1960 the spaghetti westerns and Clint Eastwood would usher in a new brand of cowboy movie. It contains the elements of old; cowboys having lots of gunfights with bandits. However, the cowboy/good guys are not so cut and dry as in the past.

A village south of the border hires seven gringo gun fighters to defend their village against a roaming band of outlaws that periodically stop by to steal whatever they want. Led by the quiet Chris and his right hand man Vin, they collect their group. There is Harry, who comes along because he thinks something bigger is afoot like hidden gold. There is Bernardo who befriends the local children. Lee has a questionable past. Britt is known for his knives as well as his gun. Last but hardly least is Chico. He spends most of the movie trying to impress the veteran guns for hire.

In old westerns the good guys were good guys plain and simple. The 7 gun fighters here are all family less drifters. The most telling scene is when Chico rides up with a girl from the village and says, "They're afraid. She's afraid of me, you, him. All of us. Farmers! Their families told them we would rape them." Chris adds, "Well we might. But in my opinion you might have given us the benefit of the doubt." Even the villagers that hired them do not trust them.

Throughout the movie we learn that the seven heros are not perfect. They are in fact just men who have yet to grow up and face real responsibility. Bronson has this great line that he says to some boys who called their fathers cowards, "You think I am brave because I carry a gun; well, your fathers are much braver because they carry responsibility, for you, your brothers, your sisters, and your mothers. And this responsibility is like a big rock that weighs a ton. It bends and it twists them until finally it buries them under the ground. And there's nobody says they have to do this. They do it because they love you, and because they want to."

The Magnificent Seven is crammed with great lines. "We deal in lead my friend." "If god didn't want them sheared, he would not have made them sheep." My favorite line is when Chico sees Britt shoot a guy from a far distance, "That was the greatest shot I've ever seen." Britt barks back, "The worst! I was aiming at the horse."

The movie ends brilliantly on an ironic note. The young gun fighter worshiping Chico ends up being the one to leave his profession and settle down. To seal the message that being a cowboy should not be the desired goal for all men, Chris says, "The old man was right. The farmers won. We lost. We always lose." The Magnificent Seven, or at least the surviving three, finally grew up, and with this movie, so did the western film genre.

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