...indebted to the American western – by John Sturges is a prime example of this trend. A group of American outlaws (in Kurosawa’s original version the men were rōnin, masterless samurai who were likewise treading their lives outside of the respectable social order) come to help a Mexican village that is being periodically raided by a group of bandits. The men agree to defend the village despite the poor pay and being hopelessly outnumbered, and in the end most of them will get killed when doing so. However, at least initially it is not a question of honour or “doing the right thing” for the seven gunfighters. They all have divergent, mostly selfish reasons for taking up the job, but eventually come to appreciate each other, if not the villagers they are defending. The Magnificent Seven is thus also a representative of another subtle shift in Hollywood westerns that was related to the broadening of American military involvement in the Third World in 1950s{\cf. \Slotkin 1992@485} – in addition to the traditional western fare that relied on...
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