I wonder if Akira Kurosawa had any idea what he was starting when he made The Seven Samurai. If he had any idea of the knockoffs that would follow, from The Magnificent Seven to Seven Magnificent Gladiators to Battle Beyond the Stars. And The Glorious Seven, the film we’re reviewing here.
The plot is familiar enough Guerra (Jerry Kwarteng) is a former special forces leader turned merc. He’s the best of the best. Anthony (Fernando Carrera) is a local land baron who’d trophy wife Valentina (Julia Mulligan) has been kidnapped by rebel leader Javier (Fernando Corral). Guerra is hired to put his crew back together and take on Javier’s army to bring her back.
From the start though The Glorious Seven throws a few plot points at you that makes it clear things aren’t what they seem. We see Javier’s forces rescue him from prison before heading directly off to grab Valentina. But we also see flashbacks of Valentina’s
As Guerra and his partner Ryan (Maurice Nash) discuss where their team is currently, one is working for the North Koreans, another is a coke addict and yet another is a Russian who just wants to know how many people he gets to kill. Not exactly the most heroic group of guys.
The result is it’s hard to give a shit about any of the sides in this fight. By the time we do have a reason to care the film is in its last act. However, a lot of folk don’t care about that, they’re just watching for the action scenes. And when we finally get to them they are quite well staged but given the budget hardly epic in nature, hardly the seven versus seven hundred scenario the poster promises. But we weren’t really expecting that were we?
Writer/director Harald Franklin has fashioned a competently made action film. If you don’t care to much about the plot then The Glorious Seven will do fine for an afternoon’s viewing.
Uncork’d Entertainment will release The Glorious Seven on VOD and DVD March 12th.