The Magnificent Seven
Columbia Pictures | Release Date: September 23, 2016 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
54
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 50 Critic Reviews
Positive:
19
Mixed:
29
Negative:
2
Watch Now
Stream On
Buy on
Stream On
Stream On
Stream On
Stream On
Expand

Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
80
Total FilmJamie GrahamSep 12, 2016
Not quite magnificent but certainly Fuqua’s best since "Training Day" and a rare remake that actually delivers. Yee-haw! Read full review
80
Time OutJoshua RothkopfSep 10, 2016
If Fuqua and his screenwriters (including True Detective’s Nic Pizzolatto) slightly botch the underlying theme of redemption—Ethan Hawke’s haunted ex-Confederate sharpshooter could have been more developed—it still makes good on its ideas of community pride. Read full review
75
The Seattle TimesSoren AndersenSep 24, 2016
Fuqua’s remake is a worthy successor to the ’60s “Seven.” Read full review
75
Charlotte ObserverLawrence ToppmanSep 24, 2016
In our post-Tarantino world, Fuqua shows remarkable restraint. The long, efficiently filmed battle doesn’t douse us in blood; for once, PG-13 is the proper rating for a violent film. Read full review
75
New York PostLou LumenickSep 22, 2016
This entertaining and handsome-looking version of The Magnificent Seven is very much tailored to his star, right down to Washington’s real-life history as a preacher’s son. Read full review
75
Rolling StonePeter TraversSep 22, 2016
The new Seven isn't aiming for cinema immortality. It's two hours of hardcore, shoot-em-up pow and it's entertaining as hell. Read full review
75
Tampa Bay TimesSteve PersallSep 21, 2016
The Magnificent Seven had me smiling throughout, tapping into Saturday matinee memories without seeming entirely old-fashioned. Read full review
75
ConsequenceBlake GobleSep 21, 2016
Fuqua isn’t interested in pushing the genre forward so much as respecting and updating the model accordingly. The director focuses on establishing his gang of gunslingers sturdily enough that the action becomes easy to engage with, and even get excited about. Read full review
75
Entertainment WeeklyLeah GreenblattSep 21, 2016
This Seven’s just silly, solid entertainment: multiplex fun by numbers. Read full review
75
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperSep 20, 2016
Over all, this is a rousing, albeit sometimes cheesy, action-packed Western bolstered by Denzel Washington’s baddest-of-the-baddasses lead performance, mostly fine supporting work, and yep, some of the most impressively choreographed extended shootout sequences in recent memory. Read full review
75
The VergeBryan BishopSep 10, 2016
Fuqua's film is ultimately a reminder of why the genre was once so wildly popular in the first place. Read full review
75
IndieWireDavid EhrlichSep 8, 2016
Truly, The Magnificent Seven is a story of simple pleasures, and it gets the little things right. Read full review
70
NPRBob MondelloSep 23, 2016
If body count is what you go to Westerns for, by all means drift into this one's corral. It's hardly magnificent, and apart from its casting it's not doing anything particularly original with its premise. But it's diverting in about the way you'd expect of a remake twice removed — call it a perfectly competent seven. Read full review
70
SlateAisha HarrisSep 22, 2016
Magnificent Seven has one and only true goal: It’s a new Hollywood crack at good, old-timey entertainment. Read full review
70
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzSep 22, 2016
It’s a fun movie, a nicely made Western in which bad guys get to be good guys sometimes. Maybe that should be enough, but you can’t help wanting more. Read full review
67
The Film StageJared MobarakSep 8, 2016
The marketing may try to dress it up like a prestige picture, but Magnificent Seven is a summer season thrill ride. Read full review
63
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Barry HertzSep 22, 2016
Pure blockbuster gloss – perfectly fine for a Saturday afternoon matinee, but instantly forgettable once you’ve emerged from the dark of a multiplex. Read full review
63
Boston GlobeTy BurrSep 22, 2016
It ain’t Shakespeare, or even Kurosawa. But it’s an acceptable remake of a western that itself was an acceptable remake of one of the greatest movies ever made. Enjoyable, even, until the last act proves how dull an overextended gun battle can get. Read full review
63
Slant MagazineJake ColeSep 18, 2016
As passably entertaining as the film is, it never surrenders to the abandon of its action, and as such never feels like it shifts out of first gear. Read full review
60
Village VoiceAlan ScherstuhlSep 28, 2016
You get enough of a sense of this place and these men — and that widow! — that it's a disappointment when, in the end, we just have to watch it all blow to hell. Read full review
60
The TelegraphTim RobeySep 24, 2016
Struggling with tone and urgency during its recruiting phase, the film clomps along to a pedestrian drum-roll, summoning a stark, brooding edge without quite enough lift-off. Read full review
60
We Got This CoveredMatt DonatoSep 22, 2016
The film is mindless entertainment by way of scoundrels, dynamite and honor – not quite magnificent, but “The Watchable Seven” just doesn’t have the same ring to it. Read full review
60
The New York TimesManohla DargisSep 22, 2016
The new movie is as moth-eaten as the serapes strewn through the 1960 film, but there’s no denying the appeal of the image of Mr. Washington riding a horse, shooting a Colt and leading a posse of vigilantes to save a mostly white Western town. Read full review
60
The GuardianJordan HoffmanSep 8, 2016
There’s a fine line between a slowburn and dull, and this Magnificent Seven frequently finds itself on the wrong side. Read full review
50
The New YorkerAnthony LaneSep 26, 2016
Traces of real history are hard to spot in Fuqua’s Western, but there isn’t much evidence of a real Western, either. You sense that an entire genre, far from being revitalized, is being plundered for handy tips. Read full review
50
TimeStephanie ZacharekSep 24, 2016
The picture is action-packed but mindlessly so, and it’s neither light enough to work as a coltish entertainment nor smart enough to cut beyond anything but the most rote notions of masculinity. Read full review
50
Philadelphia InquirerTirdad DerakhshaniSep 22, 2016
Despite a great cast and several terrific action sequences, Fuqua's film is largely forgettable. Read full review
50
USA TodayBrian TruittSep 22, 2016
The Magnificent Seven is like a long-fused stick of dynamite: It takes forever to get interesting but does at least unleash an explosive finale. Read full review
50
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliSep 22, 2016
If there’s a compelling reason to remake The Magnificent Seven, it can’t be found in the 2016 version, a loud, cluttered, and generally disappointing production. Read full review
50
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsSep 22, 2016
This movie's all over the place, trying too hard to be all Westerns to all sensibilities. Read full review
50
Washington PostAnn HornadaySep 22, 2016
The Magnificent Seven is fine as far as it goes, but — especially when the familiar strains of the 1960 theme song begin wafting over the final scenes — one can’t help feeling that it should have gone much further. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChroniclePeter HartlaubSep 22, 2016
Go in with low expectations and you might be pleasantly surprised. Read full review
50
St. Louis Post-DispatchCalvin WilsonSep 22, 2016
Only when there’s an opportunity to blow things up does Fuqua seem fully engaged. Another Western bites the dust. Read full review
50
Los Angeles TimesKenneth TuranSep 22, 2016
A sense of lethargy hangs uneasily over the lumbering new version of The Magnificent Seven. Despite its sturdy plot, seasoned director and capable cast toplined by Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt and Ethan Hawke, it arrives in a comatose state, a film unlikely to arouse passions one way or another. Read full review
50
The A.V. ClubIgnatiy VishnevetskySep 21, 2016
More importantly, copying an earlier era’s empty slickness still produces only empty slickness. Read full review
50
Austin ChronicleMarjorie BaumgartenSep 21, 2016
Neglects to provide the characters with enough background history to explain what makes them such original figures in the Old West. Read full review
50
Movie NationRoger MooreSep 19, 2016
This “Seven” is more diverse, less patronizing than the famous Western it remakes. But it lacks the moral certitude and righteousness of its predecessor, a pre-Vietnam “America saves Paradise from a Dictator” allegory. Read full review
50
ScreenCrushMatt SingerSep 10, 2016
The group...make a fine crew. But the rest of the movie doesn’t find enough interesting wrinkles on the old formula to merit a reboot. Read full review
50
RogerEbert.comBrian TallericoSep 9, 2016
The sheer talent of the cast here sometimes provides enough depth to get audience members to the climactic shoot-out, and there are a few definite MVPs in terms of ensemble, but it’s hard to envision this film having anywhere near the cinematic legacy of those that inspired it. Read full review
50
VarietyOwen GleibermanSep 8, 2016
Fuqua is trying for John Ford meets Sergio Leone: a funky classical sweep, with room for delirious shootouts. The trouble is that he mimics the trademarks of those directors without their élan, and the plot that was once catchy is now rote. Read full review
50
The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthySep 8, 2016
Except for the fact that virtually every shot, chop or stab the good guys make hits its mark to make the bad guys quickly drop like toy soldiers, the climactic showdown delivers what it needs to action-wise, leading to a satisfactory wrap-up. Read full review
50
TheWrapRobert AbeleSep 8, 2016
The performances are dedicated, but the camaraderie feels perfunctory, outside of a few ruminative exchanges between Hawke and Washington. Read full review
40
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinSep 23, 2016
The Magnificent Seven has the trappings of a classic Western and it hits its marks. All of Fuqua’s movies hit their marks — even sadistic formula junk like "The Equalizer." But there’s no grandeur in its images or generosity in its soul. I don’t think Fuqua ever loved Westerns. And by the time this movie ended, I’d forgotten why I do. Read full review
40
New York Daily NewsStephen Whitty Sep 21, 2016
Instead of ever getting truly "Magnificent," these multicultural gunslingers remain largely a meh seven. Read full review
40
New Orleans Times-PicayuneMike ScottSep 20, 2016
As a result, while the film is certainly intense at times, it's not some sort of Sam Pekinpah blood-fest. Read full review
40
EmpirePhil de SemlyenSep 13, 2016
Slick but forgettable, Fuqua’s suicide squad is a macho posse movie that could use a jab of fun. It’s The Magnificent Seven, but the “magnificent” is silent. Read full review
40
CineVueBen NicholsonSep 10, 2016
Richard Wenk and Nic Pizzolatto's screenplay completely lacks the interpersonal vibrancy that a film like this needs and this is glaring given that it maintains the slow-build tension of the original. Read full review
40
Screen DailyTim GriersonSep 8, 2016
Because the roles are underwritten and the players struggle to establish a rapport, The Magnificent Seven never lets the audience feel like its along for the ride with a dynamic group of death-or-glory hombres. Read full review
30
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternSep 22, 2016
Ethan Hawke is appealing as a polysyllabic coward of some complexity, but Mr. Washington has been stripped of his usual verve and grace. Sometimes you can catch him going slack, like a man looking for the exit. Read full review
25
The PlaylistKevin JagernauthSep 8, 2016
It would be too easy to say The Magnificent Seven isn’t magnificent. It’s definitely not, but the film has an even more egregious quality: it’s uninspired. There’s no risk, no real attempts to subvert expectations, and no desire to truly give the audience something, if not entirely new, then at least surprising. Read full review
More From This Movie

54 Critic Reviews

6.5 User Reviews

Details & Credits|Trailers

Current Movie Releases
By MetascoreBy User Score
1 81 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple
2 77 Project Hail Mary
3 75 Send Help
4 73 Hoppers
5 71 The Sheep Detectives
SEE ALL
Essential Links
New on Amazon Prime Video
New on Netflix
Coming Soon to DVD/Blu-ray
SEE ALL