Misuraca says the curriculum and structure across Fuqua’s degree programs are intentionally designed to support a style of leadership that understands how to get the most out of teams, by maximizing the knowledge found in different skillsets and life experiences, and using those differences to find the best solutions in working toward a common goal. Misuraca says the central concept of that lab is “Team Fuqua”-a way of working that draws out the strengths in others. “We are really thoughtful about the emphasis we put on the concept of teams,” said Associate Dean Steve Misuraca. Like so many directors, Fuqua adheres to the “more is more” philosophy, mistaking bludgeoning an audience with entertaining it.“Team” may be the word heard most often in the halls of Duke’s Fuqua School of Business. Throw in a Gatling gun that’s able to spray bullets across a distance with a range that defies physics and you have a sequence that not only confuses the viewer but insults their intelligence as well. This half-hour of carnage is the very definition of overkill as actions are repeated ad nauseum, all of it cut together in a blur that defies the viewer to make sense of where any characters are in relation to the others. The movie’s climax is particularly troublesome as this pitched battle between 200 bad guys, the townsfolk and the mercenaries is a muddle of action that descends into the ridiculous. Fuqua does little in the way to inspire them as these capable professionals are left to look tough, handle their weapon of choice adroitly and ride their horses without falling off. (The one piece of inspiration comes in giving Robicheaux, nicknamed “The Angel of Death,” a debilitating case of PTSD). The first hour is passable as these things go, but the script from Nic Pizzolatto and Richard Wenk employs far too many tired conventions to keep a seasoned viewer engaged, while the cast is given far too little in the way of motivation or history to allow them to create characters we care about. They’re all brought together during the film’s first 50 minutes, each given a moment in the spotlight so they can all show how magnificent they are. The titular group, consists of bounty hunter Sam Chisolm (Denzel Washington), card sharp Josh Faraday (Chris Pratt), sharpshooter Goodnight Robicheaux (Ethan Hawke), wacky mountain man Jack Horne (Vincent D’Onofrio), knife-thrower extraordinaire Billy Rocks (Byung-hun Lee), vicious fugitive Vasquez (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) and the renegade warrior Red Harvest (Martin Sensmeier). This sets the tone for the film, which harkens back to the silent era what with its lack of subtlety where the villain’s actions and the heroes’ intentions are concerned. Needlessly punctuated by the ham-fisted score from Simon Franglen and James Horner, this sequence reaches a fever pitch far too early, unable to sustain its sense of horror and justice, instead falling into parody. ![]() His intentions are made clear from the start with an overwrought opening scene that finds the moustache-twirler ordering his hired guns to burn down a church and kill unarmed sodbusters in the streets in front of their families. This time out, the town in question is Rose Creek, Montana, the besieged are farmers, and the bad guy is robber baron Bartholomew Bogue (a horrible Peter Sarsgaard), who’s intent on driving the settlers out so he can take their land and mine for coal. Bandits are terrorizing a settlement, and what remains of the populace sets out to hire a group of mercenaries to protect them. ![]() Hoping to capitalize on a familiar title as well as the star power of its two leads, this misguided effort gets bogged down by far too much posturing while providing little in the way of substance.Īs seen in the 1960 version of this film featuring Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen and Charles Bronson and Akira Kurosawa’s 1954 original The Seven Samurai, the plot is an exercise in simplicity as well as economy. This approach plus poorly choreographed sequences of extended carnage is all director Antoine Fuqua has up his sleeve where his remake of The Magnificent Seven is concerned, a Western made by people who don’t really know much about Westerns. There’s much more to making a Western than putting movie stars under Stetson hats, giving them six-shooters and throwing them on a horse.
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