| 12+Cautions: some language, brief immodest behavior, some ethical confusion, and violence
The Magnificent Seven is the action-filled story of a small Mexican village that gives up everything to hire a band of American gunmen to help them fight off an army of bandits. The occasional desperado in the diverse mixture of gunfighters adds a mild tension to the otherwise classic good-guy/bad-guy conflict, making this legendary western a bit more like real life than like the moral ideal.
1960 | John Sturges | 128 min Watch Trailer
Some Language
D-mn them!
I’ll be d-mned!
I’ll be d-mned!
d-mned
d-mn
d-mn
Oh, h-ll!
Válgame Dios
Válgame Dios
Válgame Dios
Brief Immodest Behavior
A village girl is drawn to a young gunman and, despite his determination to leave the village once the fighting is over, puts her arms around him and entices him to kiss her twice.
A village parade involves shirtless men. The villagers admit to having been afraid that the gunmen would rape their wives and daughters.
Some Ethical Confusion
Not all of the seven gunmen are hero-quality, and none of them have completely unquestionable motives, ethics or histories.
The least positively portrayed of the seven comes along strictly because he believes there is a secret gold stash involved, and all of his actions are tainted by greed (this is portrayed negatively). In the end, the main character falsely confirms the greedy gunman’s ideas, to preserve the man’s dignity.
The second-least positively portrayed gunman is running from the law after having found (and apparently killed) some of his personal enemies. The main character’s rationale for bringing him along is that “he’s a good gun, and we aren’t heading for a church social.”
Another of the gunslingers consents to a to-the-death contest with a cowboy who persistently harassed him into the competition, and ends up killing the man.
While all seven of the gunfighters, at various points in the movie, end up with a desire for justice as their primary motive for helping the villagers, a few of them started out the story with a desire for excitement as their primary motive. Some of them compare the freedom they have as bachelor mercenaries with the burden of family responsibility they see among the villagers, but in the end they see the settled-down family life as the better one.
A few of the little boys from the village plan to pretend they’re asleep and then rejoin the gunmen without their parents knowing they’ve left. A young woman says she doesn’t care that her father will punish her, and implies that she is acting in deliberate defiance of him.
Spoiler Warning - One of the main characters, after some of his comrades have been killed, sees the triumphant villagers enjoying their old way of life again, and says somewhat stoically that while the farmers have won, he and his companions always lose. This can be taken in a broad sense, as nihilism, or more feasibly in a narrow sense, as referring to their sacrifice without any personal gain.
Violence
Several men (including good guys) are shot to death in fighting sequences, in a generally non-bloody but occasionally somewhat emotionally intense way. A couple of non-gory good-guy death scenes last a minute or two each. In one of the fight scenes, a bad guy falls through a doorway with an axe in his back. One of the gunfighters throws a knife at a man and kills him.
Note:
It is implied that the villagers are Roman Catholics. Village boys cross themselves at a grave site.
Characters, including good guys, drink whiskey in saloons and other places. One of the good guys is drunk and angry during one scene, where his actions are negatively portrayed.
One of the main characters is briefly shown gambling, but he loses all of his money in the process. There are two brief references to luck.
There is some smoking.
