Tag: Ethan Hawke

Training Day (2001)

Pulsating corrupt-cop drama, highly entertaining with a full-throttle Denzel Washington

Director: Antoine Fuqua

Cast: Denzel Washington (Detective Alonzo Harris), Ethan Hawke (Officer Jake Hoyt), Scott Glenn (Roger), Tom Berenger (Stan Gursky LAPD), Harris Yulin (Doug Rosselli LAPD), Raymond J Barry (Lou Jacobs LAPD), Cliff Curtis (Smiley), Dr Dre (Officer Paul), Snoop Dogg (Blue), Macy Gray (Sandman’s wife), Charlotte Ayanna (Lisa), Eva Mendes (Sara)

“King Kong ain’t got nothing on me!” That’s the mantra of larger-than-life legendary cop Alonzo Harris (Denzel Washington), who has immersed himself so much in the dirty neighbourhood gangland of LA that it’s hard to see where cop ends and crook begins. Alonso claims to believe to keep the town clean, you gotta break a few rules. But then he also believes in filling his own pockets with stolen money. It’s all going to come to a head in one day: first day on the job for ambitious boy-scout officer Jake Hoyt (Ethan Hawke) who thinks he’s auditioning to join an elite squad only to find he’s the victim of a series of elaborate mind-games and dodgy moves by Alonzo, testing to see whether he is potential asset or sacrificial pawn. It’s going to be a long day.

Training Day is basically a massive dance with the devil, offering his little Faustus all the wonders of the world in return for his soul. It’s all there for Hoyt’s taking: respect, glory, standing – and of course oodles of plastic-wrapped dollar bills. All he has to do is sacrifice every inch of his integrity and personal morality to Alonzo Harris, a grandstanding Mephistopheles. This first day is all about Harris pushing Hoyt to see how far he will go. Will he smoke a little dope so he could pass as an undercover druggie? Will he search a house under a false warrant? Will he rough up a suspect? Will he murder a drugdealer and steal his cash?

Throughout all this, Denzel Washington barnstorms to fantastic Oscar-winning effect. This is a delightfully Devilish performance, Washington leaving it all out on the pitch. Alonzo Harris has inhabited the persona of the gangsters he follows for so long he’s basically become one. Harris is scarily charismatic, the unshakeable confident cool he uses to cow and terrify criminals and punks on the street, also making him a hugely attractive figure. This is despite his complete amorality, his ruthless capacity for violence and his shocking willingness to abuse and use almost everyone around him. He does all this by convincing Hoyt for long stretches that his poor treatment, abuse and deception of him is all in Hoyt’s own interest: to toughen up this naïve puppy into a killer.

Hoyt spends half the time if this is some elaborate show-and-test. Who can blame him? Washington’s exuberance plays masterfully on the edges of someone putting on a massive performance. There are neat moment where we see how fragile some of Harris’ control is, once he is outside of his comfort zone: he’s in hoc for millions to Russian gangsters and as events of the day pile up his thermonuclear self-confidence tips into moments of impotent fury. Washington is fantastic as this street monster, whose seductive lines on modern policing (do a little bad to do a greater good) start off sounding like common sense before you realise they tip quickly into justifying open criminality. It’s a performance of perfect physical swagger matched with his limitless charisma, inverting the qualities that made him a perfect Steve Biko or Malcolm X into a Lectorish monster.

Ethan Hawke is also extremely good as his polar opposite, the eager to please rookie who realises there is a lot more going on here than he thought. Training Day suggests there may well be a middle ground between Hoyt’s straight-as-an-arrow idea of policing and Harris’ corruption – and it’s part of Harris’ appeal that his perverted mentoring ends up making Hoyt a tougher, more unrelenting (better?) cop than he was before. But also, Hawke is great at showing that Hoyt (under his sheen of moral uprightness) is also a tough, hardened professional. In classic story-telling style, Harris is a dark reflection of Hoyt: they share a stubbornness, a conviction that they are right, a refusal to be intimidated (Hoyt may nervously try to please Harris at first, but once he realises the score he refuses to be forced into doing anything he doesn’t want to do) and a capacity for throwing themselves into decisive action. There is a reason why this rookie can get the drop on Harris – much to his wicked mentor’s delight and admiration – in a way no one else can.

That alone shows the dark magnetism of people like Harris: like Hoyt we end up wanting their approval even when we hate or fear them. Even as he holds a shotgun to his head, there is a part of Hoyt you suspect is proud that Harris’ gut reaction is to shout an impressed “My man!”. Of course Harris knows his validation is important to people. Monsters like this know the weaker-willed crave their respect. But then Harris also knows no one else in his team – all of them weak-willed bullies, desperately trying to imitate them – have even a quarter of the independence of mind Hoyt has.

What Harris under-estimates is Hoyt’s survival instinct. The final third of the film, the clash that has been building inevitably between these two, again demonstrates both their similarities and their fundamental differences. The main difference between them being Hoyt cares for, and protects others, and Harris cares only about himself. Hoyt’s humanitarianism will save him from dangerous situations and even Harris’ girlfriend (a tough-but-cowed performance from Eva Mendes) recognises Hoyt has shown more concern for her son in a few minutes than his father, Harris, ever has in his whole life.

The final act of Training Day hinges a little too much on one whopper of a coincidence: the sort of narrative contrivance so colossal that, in a less magnetic film, you’d be throwing stuff at the TV shouting “oh come on!” It’s final, inevitable, confrontation between Harris and Hoyt feels rather too much like many, many other films before it in every single beat, while the ending has a whiff of Hays Code morality (all wrongs righted!) about it that rather undermines the edgy, unpredictable film it precedes.

But when Training Day focuses on the sound and the fury of Washington and the Faustian dance on the deep grey lines of street policing, this is a sensational, energetic and highly watchable cop thriller, pulsatingly directed by Antonie Fuqua. With Washington superb and Hawke easy to overlook as his straight-laced partner, it’s a character study that constantly shifts our expectations and leaves us genuinely worried about the fate of its hero. The sort of slick entertainment Hollywood does at its best.

The Northman (2022)

A viking tears through flesh and blood in quest for revenge in this bizarre, fascinating Viking epic

Director: Robert Eggers

Cast: Alexander Skarsgård (Amleth), Nicole Kidman (Queen Gudrún), Claes Bang (Fjölnir the Brotherless), Anya Taylor-Joy (Olga of the Birch Forest), Ethan Hawke (King Aurvandill War-Raven), Björk (The Seeress), Willem Dafoe (Heimir), Oscar Novak (Young Amleth), Gustav Lindh (Thorir), Ingvar Eggert Sigurðsson (He-Witch), Kate Dickie (Halldora), Ralph Ineson (Captain Volodymyr)

Ask people about Hamlet, and they picture a poetic Prince, plagued with doubt and vulnerability, talking to skulls rather than carrying out his mission of revenge. What you probably don’t think about are Vikings on a Berserker rage, slaughtering left, right and centre. But Hamlet has its roots in a bloody Scandinavian legend, where remorseless death is handed out by a ruthless killer. That’s the side of Hamlet, Eggers takes for inspiration in his bloody, bold and resolute Viking film, a blood-soaked acid trip it’s hard to imagine anyone else making.

It’s 895 and King Aurvandill (Ethan Hawke) returns from conquest to his wife Gudrún (Nicole Kidman) and young son Amleth (Oscar Novak). Amleth takes his vows of manhood with his father, guided by a demented He-witch (Willem Dafoe) – only for his father to be almost immediately killed by his half-brother Fjölnir (Claes Bangs), who seizes his throne and wife. Amleth escapes – and years later has grown into a berserker Viking warrior (and Alexander Skarsgård). He sees his chance for revenge when he disguises himself as a slave, and joins a shipment traveling to Fjölnir’s village (Fjölnir having lost his throne). There he forms an alliance with Russian slave Olga (Anya Taylor-Joy) and works to undermine and terrify Fjölnir, before he can enact his revenge and save his mother.

The Northman is, possibly above all, a shocking, absorbing deep-dive into Viking Culture. Eggers doesn’t shirk for a second from the bloody, ruthless mayhem of Viking life. Our introduction to the adult Amleth sees him first whipping himself (and others) into a (possibly magic mushroom fuelled) Berserker rage, dressed as wolves and howling at the fireside, before launching an unbelievably ruthless attack on a Russian village. The desperate peasants are butchered with savage fury (and blood lust). In the aftermath, rape, murder and other horrors occur uncommented on in the background, while those not seen fit for slavery are herded into a barn to be casually burned alive.

Amleth, at no point, expresses a jot of regret for his actions (as a Viking wouldn’t), and even after passing for a slave never questions the institution. His revenge uses the same ruthless, blood-dripping fury as his ravaging and his only passing moment of pause is about directly killing Viking women and children (he gets over it). In all this he is in no way different from the rest – in fact he’s even one of the more sympathetic – Vikings. Fjölnir – revealed as otherwise a wise and generous leader – ruthlessly murders and rapes his slave as he fancies and a weekend’s entertainment for all is watching two teams of slaves beat themselves to death in a no-holds-barred version of hockey.

Eggers leaves you in no doubt that, for all the grim fascination, this is a brutal and savage civilisation that you would in no way want to encounter. Saying that, despite Eggers’ clear intentions, with the film’s cast modelling a sort of chiselled, gym-trained super-human Aryanism, sweeping away Slavic peasants and enforcing a triumph of Nordic culture, parts of this film are surely being channelled into the wet dreams of elements of the right-wing.

The film doesn’t just explore violence. Family bonds are demonstrated to be all important to Vikings – Amleth and Fjölnir are dedicated to their families and go to huge ends to protect and mourn them. (A funeral of one warrior features elaborate blood-letting, as the deceased’s horse is decapitated and his favourite slave willingly butchered so both can join him on the journey to the afterlife). There is a mutual regard and affection between warriors – even opponents – in a culture that puts itself above others. Honoured slaves are respected – though told they can never be equal. Licensed fools and mystics are given a great deal of freedom – Willem Dafoe’s crazed He-witch at Aurvandill’s court mocks all and sundry with no repercussions. There is a huge faith placed in wise men and women who inspire awe and fear – even a slave, such as Olga, with possible mystic powers is treated with caution. Bonds and duties across generations and to the next life are revered. Prophecies and destinies are respected. Poetry and storytelling is highly valued.

For all the killing, there are elements of a rich culture here and strong family bonds. All these combine in the person of Amleth, who will not be shaken from his destiny but will enact it in his own time, in line with the prophecies he of a seeress (an unrecognisable Björk). Eventually it doesn’t matter if Amleth’s idealised memory of his parents turns out to be not the whole story, or if he has a chance to build a new life. Destiny is, in fact, all.

Eggers’ film takes place in what almost a state of heightened, fevered excitement. Beautifully shot by Jarin Blaschke, it mixes expressionistic near-black-and-white, with drained-out shots of violence and flame-lit moments of psychological and body horror. Visions shot in a piercing mix of blues, greys and icey chilliness puncture the film, with strange compositions of characters, Valkyries, Valhalla and the Gods. Supernatural elements pepper the film, with Amleth’s father influencing events in the shape of a raven and Amleth completing a quest for a fateful sword. These moments of hyper-reality are perfectly executed and in a visually unique, blood-drenched nightmare.

Where The Northman is less successful is exploring the inner-depth of its characters. Skarsgård is charismatic and physically perfect, but doesn’t give much inner-life to Amleth. Moments of doubt or uncertainty in Amleth never quite convince and he feels more a force of nature than a person. There are richer performances from others, Kidman in particular a revelation as a cryptic, unknowable woman with a mid-film encounter of heightened emotional (and sexual) tension between her Skarsgård. Bangs’ Fjölnir is strangely sympathetic. Anya Taylor-Joy carries a dominant, mystical force in her performance that helps make her character a bridge between multiple worlds.

All these combine into a film of shocking violence, jaw-dropping beauty and troubling emotional and psychological horror. There is no doubt the film is overlong – there are probably one too many deeply odd segues into drug-induced ravings of various prophets and seers – but as an exploration of a culture so uniquely alien, its sublime. As a piece of work from a truly distinctive and unmatchable director, it’s superb. You look it The Northman and can’t believe anyone else could have made it. If nothing else, that makes it a film worthy of your time.

Boyhood (2014)

Ellar Coltrane grows up before our eyes in Richard Linklater’s 12-years-in-the-making Boyhood

Director: Richard Linklater

Cast: Ellar Coltrane (Mason Evans Jr), Patricia Arquette (Olivia), Ethan Hawke (Mason Evans), Lorelei Linklater (Samantha Evans), Libby Villari (Catherine), Marco Perella (Bill Welbrock), Brad Hawkins (Jim), Zoe Graham (Sheena)

If there is one thing we can all relate to, it’s the trials and tribulations of growing up, that shift from being a child to an adult. It’s the subject of Richard Linklater’s film Boyhood, which follows the growing up of Mason Evans (Ellar Coltrane) from the age of 6 to 18 and his relationship with his divorced parents Olivia (Patricia Arquette) and Mason (Ethan Hawke) and his sister Samantha (Lorelei Linklater). What is however most striking about Linklater’s film is that it was shot over a staggering period of time, 12 years in fact, meaning that Ellar Coltrane and Lorelei Linklater literally grow up on screen before our eyes.

It makes for an almost unrepeatable power over any other film dealing with the same subject, by letting all the actors naturally grow older over the length of the film. Suddenly it becomes not just a film dealing with an idea, but instead a real life dramatisation of the process of ageing, becoming some sort of emotional scrap-book or album, a type of film version of the trick of making a drawing move by quickly flicking the pages of a notebook. It adds an air of depth and reality to the whole film that gives it a universal strength and appeal. It’s an actual slice of real life, it’s unrepeatable and profoundly well done and immersive.

Linklater was given near creative freedom to shoot the film – with the small yearly budget for shooting the film being squirrelled away into various studio accounts. Linklater creates a film with a lack of actual drama that makes it feel even more like a part of life. There are precious few “narrative points” or dramatic tools in the overall film, with the exception maybe of Olivia’s hard drinking second husband Marco (Bill Welbrock). Instead, the issues that Mason (and Samantha) deal with have a universal relevance. These are the sort of events – the sort of conversations – that any child could have growing up. Far from making the film dull, this serves to increase its power.

Linklater based each year’s filming script on the events and feelings that were going on in the life of Ellar Coltrane at the time (although he had a clear idea of the final scene and shot), which perhaps also helped to draw such a series of deeply felt and real performances from Coltrane. The intimacy of the story also brilliantly makes each scene feel engrossingly real, precisely because everything is grounded in reality and nothing in some sort of overarching film narrative.

It’s a film entirely about capturing the rhythms and beats of real life and Linklater’s style allows moments of spontaneity, of naturalness and reality. Nothing in the film ever feels forced. You could argue that it also leads to a film that is almost restrainingly unambitious – it’s about as grounded as you can get, and barely has a structure as such at all beyond time passing. But that would be to miss the point – and the very fact that the film ignores virtually all the clichés of filmmaking narrative and storytelling is something to be praised than to be criticised.

The film works so well due to the commitment of all involved, not least Arquette and Hawke as the parents. Arquette won nearly every award going (including the Oscar) as the mother, and her performance is a testament to the film’s strengths. It totally eschews the loud moments of acting, the look-at-me Oscar bait that the role could have had, to instead focus on a quiet, sad dignity – but also warmth and loving regard for her children. There is no studied pretence to the role at all, but instead Arquette seems to play instead the moments of joy, tinged with disappointment at moments and chances lost from early motherhood, that you can imagine everyone feeling. It’s a bravely real performance, stuffed with moments of searing, heartfelt emotional truth.

Hawke is just as good as the father, a man who slowly comes to terms with his own responsibilities and adulthood over the course of the film. Starting as still something of a would-be beatnik and playboy, we see him slowly – especially after a second marriage – grow up and accept the role of an adult and a parent, while still clinging to the idea of dispensing fatherly/brotherly wisdom to his son.

If Linklater’s film does have a flaw it’s on this focus of father-son. There really was nothing to stop this from being Childhood rather than Boyhood, but instead it’s the story of the son (and with a particular stress on his bond with his absent father) that is at the heart of the film. It’s perhaps reflecting the angle that Linklater himself bought to the story, but its shame the film doesn’t try and be more even handed by allowing us to get a greater sense of how time and childhood affected both Mason and Samantha, rather than filtering Samantha’s experience through Mason’s perspective. It also means that Mason’s relationship with his mother is downplayed in favour of the bond between father and son, a general preoccupation with male relationships that runs through the film.

It’s a minor flaw I suppose, more of a missed opportunity – and less tasteless than a clumsy sequence where Oliva inadvertently motivates a Mexican immigrant to change his life, something he is profoundly grateful for years later but which she seems uncomfortably unaware of – but then this is a film that gets so much else right. Linklater’s live-action time-lapse film is a work of art that is probably unrepeatable, and is so low-key and normal that it carries a force and relevance few other films can.

Dead Poet's Society (1989)

Robin Williams is an inspirational teacher (is there any other type in films?) in Dead Poet’s Society

Director: Peter Weir

Cast: Robin Williams (John Keating), Robert Sean Leonard (Neil Perry), Ethan Hawke (Todd Anderson), Josh Charles (Knox Overstreet), Gale Hansen (Charlie Dalton), Norman Lloyd (Headmaster Gale Nolan), Kurtwood Smith (Mr Perry), Dylan Kussman (Richard Cameron), James Waterson (Gerard Pitts)

“Oh Captain, My Captain!” Your feelings for Dead Poet’s Society are probably directly linked to how you react to that desk-standing ending. A triumph of emotional film-making? Or garishly over-sentimentalised nonsense? I’ll go for the latter myself, as I found myself non-plussed and unengaged with this conventional “idealistic teacher changes lives of young boys” story. Seen it all before.

In 1959 at elite, all-male prep school Welton Academy, four young students (Robert Sean Leonard, Ethan Hawke, Josh Charles and Gale Hansen) are surprised by the unorthodox teaching methods of their new English teacher, Welton Academy old boy John Keating (Robin Williams). Rather than teach the stuffy, facts based curriculum, Keating encourages the boy to use their hearts and minds, to be creative and above all to carpe diem as much as they can. The boys start an illicit poetry club (?) and begin to explore their own artistic leanings – but their conservative parents and school won’t stand for this challenge of the orthodox and when tragedy strikes it’s Keating who gets the blame.

Dead Poet’s Society already feels a bit dated, and it’s story line treads all too familiar ground of fusty seniors struggling to understand the artistic stirrings of the youngsters inspired by the sort of maverick inspirational teacher that everyone at one time or another has dreamed of being. Naturally of course (as per the rules of films) all the other teachers are either cynical, disinterested or box tickers. For a genuine artist like Weir, I was struck by how plodding this film was in its story and construction and also its ideas and themes. It’s a struggle between generations played out at a point in history where the cultural revolution of the sixties was just about to happen. These ideas were already over twenty five years old when the film was made – and this adds nothing really too the mix.

Instead we get the standard tropes we might expect, as the students play out expected and predictable plots. Nervy Ethan Hawke, at first too shy to speak, finds the courage to express himself. Josh Charles sets out to woo the girl he loves (at times this is more than a little creepy). Proto-rebel (and no doubt soon to be sixties activist) Gale Hansen begins bucking authority and writing scurrilous articles for the School newspaper. And Robert Sean Leonard begins to defy his domineering father’s wishes to focus solely and exclusively on a medical career by landing the part of Puck in a local play and dreaming of a career in the theatre.

Despite the focus of much of the film’s promotion (and in people’s memories) on Robin Williams’ central performance, the story line is all about these boys. And I will say there are some fine performances from these four principles – three of whom went on to have notable careers. Particularly fine is Robert Sean Leonard, who gets a meaty pile to play with as a young adolescent who lacks the courage to tell his father what he really feels and carries all this with a confidence and assurance (even though his Puck performance is hardly the work of genius the film insists it is!).

It’s unfortunate that most of what they do is the totally expected collection of school yard clichés, which builds towards an inevitable and predictable, sad, sentimental, ending. Keating is the standard inspirational teacher, given to flights of fancy and eccentric touches (tearing pages from books, leading the boys in sports designed to build their poetry skills, encouraging the boys skilfully to recite their own poetry) that will either leave you wishing you had him as a teacher or leave you cold.

Watching it now, and seeing Keating interact with his students, you can’t help but feel his increasing closeness with the boys, his encouraging them to call him “Captain” (in one skincrawling moment he doesn’t even turn around when walking until one of them addresses him as this!), his taking them to plays, his obvious favouring of a few key students would all contribute to him struggling to get CRB cleared. I actually found his character rather grating, although the film does use a good few moments to underline how Keating rebukes the boys for their more thoughtless and pointless acts of rebellion and how he urges Neil to gain the support of his father before acting.

Nothing particularly wrong with Robin Williams performance though, even though the thing you feel impressed people the most was this most energetic of funny men restraining himself in a relatively straight and low-key part. It’s a role several actors could have taken on just as well, but Williams does a sound job.

It’s a shame that the film itself is so deeply bland. Its later sentimental touches become increasingly heavy handed and overbearing, and it’s parable of betrayal and corruption in a 1950s school hits its points equally hard. There is nothing really fresh or unique here, and the film itself never brings its story to life in a way that feels fresh or unique. It’s a film widely loved, but to be honest for the uninitiated has more than enough moments of weakness for you to want to check out of this class.

The Magnificent Seven (2016)

Denzel Washington leads his gang of seven wildly different souls to do battle for the little guy

Director: Antoine Fuqua

Cast: Denzel Washington (Sam Chisolm), Chris Pratt (Joshua Faraday), Ethan Hawke (Goodnight Robicheaux), Vincent D’Onofrio (Jack Horne), Byung-hun Lee (Billy Rocks), Manuel Garcia-Rulfo (Vasquez), Martin Sensmeier (Red Harvest), Haley Bennett (Emma Cullen), Peter Sarsgaard (Bartholomew Bogue), Luke Grimes (Teddy Q)

The Magnificent Seven is a much loved staple of BBC bank holiday weekend screenings. The original wasn’t a brilliant piece of film-making art, but it was a brilliant piece of film-making entertainment, and it had simple, wry, heartfelt (if sometimes on-the-nose) observations to make about the sacrifices the life of a gunslinger calls for. How does the remake measure up?

In 1879, the village of Rose Creek is besieged by would-be industrialist Bartholomew Brogue (Peter Sarsgaard), who orders the villagers to leave as he plans to expand the local mine. Newly widowed Emma Cullen (Haley Bennett) sets out to recruit gunslingers to help protect the town. Warrant Officer Sam Chisolm (Denzel Washington) is her first recruit, and he helps her to gather six others from drunken cardsharp Joshua Faraday (Chris Pratt) to legendary sharpshooter Goodnight Robicheaux (Ethan Hawke). But the battle to protect the village will lead to many good men six feet under before our heroes can have the chance to prevail…

One thing’s for sure. In 60 years’ time they won’t be playing this film every bank holiday weekend. That doesn’t mean this is a bad film, it’s just quite an average one. It’s decently done, has several good scenes and even one or two witty lines in among a fairly routine script, but there is very little imagination or inspiration behind this. It’s got a decent cast of actors, but you always feel they are lifting average material rather than working with the good stuff. While the original film combined a sense of boyhood heroics and some iconic performances with some exploration of the emptiness of the life of a gunslinger and the attraction of a normal life, this film manages to deliver much less on all these counts.

So first the good parts. Much of the gun-toting action is very well done. The first shootout as our heroes arrive in the town is terrific (see link below), full of thrilling beats and rewindable moments. To be honest, it’s the best moment of the film, and as close as it comes to capturing the excitement of old-school gunslinging action. The final battle scene is decent, but offers generally more of the same with additional (no spoilers to say) sacrifice. Even without the inspirations of the original film, many of the character beats will be familiar to the watching audience. I successfully predicted which of the cowboys would survive early in the film, and only one death is near to a surprise. It’s well done, but it’s not got the filmmaking expertise of Kevin Costner’s Open Range, with its final small-band-against-an-army structure, nor that film’s intelligent and low-key analysis of the cost of violence.

It’s that lack of human insight that I think is one of the film’s principal weaknesses. The original had more to say about the damage a life of violence can inflict on people, and the longing even the most hardened man of the world can find for the simple life – as well as the lengths they will go to in order to protect it. This film offers none of that. The motivations for the seven in joining are incredibly thin, almost after-thoughts. At least two members of the team simply turn-up, as if dropped from the sky. Team leader Chris has a “very personal” motivation, signposted from the very start, that serves to undermine much of the depths we seem to learn about his character during the film – as well as making him just another “man looking for revenge” architype.

On top of that, a serious trick is missed when setting this film near the end of the Western era. Already the time of these lawless gunslingers is coming to an end, and they have no place in the modern world. The villain is a sort of corporate bully, launching a hostile take-over of the village for his mining company. There is plenty of thematic material to mine here of these men taking a stand not only against the strong persecuting the weak, but also against the onrush of time that is leaving them behind. Now I’m not expecting the film to be a serious socio-economic discussion, but I’d like to watch a film that at least tips the hat to ideas like this (or any ideas at all) rather than just push through a well-filmed but-by-the-numbers remake.

Saying all this, it is pretty entertaining in an unchallenging way. It does make you want to go back and re-watch the original version (which was itself, to be fair, little more than a crowd pleaser). But that’s kind of all it is – and it doesn’t have any ambition to be more. But it’s a good watch and some of the updating ideas work very well. The multiracial composition of the seven works very well, and Haley Bennett as the “Eighth” member of the team, is a strongly written role that feels like a character rather than an accessory. Washington can do this role standing on his head, but brings his customary authority. Chris Pratt is at his Harrison Fordish charming best, particularly on the edge of bursting out into a childish grin, in gleeful excitement at being paid to play cowboys. Hawke is saddled with the thematic content as a gunslinger with PTSD, but makes a good fist of it. Much of the rest of the gang are a collection of moments rather than characters, but do their jobs well.

The Magnificent Seven, it seems too easy to say, isn’t magnificent. It’s an unambitious film without any real thinking or imagination in its conception. It seems scared of introducing anything too conceptual or thought-provoking in its setting or plot. It’s just about entertaining enough to survive while you are watching it, but its life is going to be little longer than the two hours you watch it, not the 60 years of its predecessor.