STACK NZ 80 December

THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN

(1960)

The oppressed residents of a Mexican village enlist the

help of seven mercenary gunslingers to fight off marauding

bandits in John Sturges’ star-powered reworking of Akira

Kurosawa’s classic

Seven Samurai

(1954). It’s grand, epic

entertainment and one of the last great Hollywood Westerns

before a certain Italian filmmaker named Sergio Leone took

up the reins. And of course there’s that unforgettable theme

from Elmer Bernstein, too.

UNFORGIVEN

(1992)

Clint Eastwood’s Best Picture Oscar-winner is everything

you’d expect from one of the genre’s icons. The director also

stars as a weary former gunslinger that takes one last job

in Big Whisky, Wyoming, where the town’s brothel workers

have put a bounty on the heads of a pair of cowboys who

attacked one of their own. A modern tale rooted in the

mythology of the Old West,

Unforgiven

is a dark look at the

effect of violence on the souls of the men who dispense it

for a living, and a bona fide classic.

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