The Magnificent Seven (2016)

Notable Action Sequence: Final Battle

Duration: 00:27:23

Act: 4th

Action Scenarios:

Escape

Fall

Fight

Pursuit

Rescue

Speed

Description: Antoine Fuqua’s remake of The Magnificent Seven (1960), itself a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai (1954) that inserts its plot within the narrative context of the western, follows its predecessors by allocating the bulk of its action to the fourth act, as attested by its atypically high AAD ratio. Much of this action is taken up in the final battle sequence, which is over twenty-seven minutes in duration. Like other extended action sequences, to sustain viewer interest over such prolonged duration, the sequence includes a variety of action forms, particularly pursuits as well as rescues that are embedded within the battle. Amongst the three embedded pursuits are those when Sam Chisholm, played by Denzel Washington, is chased by two of Bartholomew Bogue’s hired guns on horseback [Figure 1], and Josh Faraday, played by Chris Pratt, is pursued while heading toward the Gatling gun wagon [Figure 2]. Chisholm also features in two embedded rescues, the first when Red Harvest dispatches a gunman aiming his pistol at Chisholm [Figure 3], and at the very end of the sequence when Emma Cullen comes to his aid when she kill Bogue who was covertly reaching for his pistol to shoot Chisholm [Figure 4].