Flick Pick: The Magnificent Seven

The Magnificent Seven
(United Artists, 1960)

As a western re-envisioning of Kurosawa's Seven Samurai (which was itself Kurosawa's take on John Ford's westerns), John Sturges' gunslinging classic was mostly panned by critics at the time, and barely broke even at the box office, owing mostly to foreign ticket sales, because it was pulled by UA after only a week. But with time it has become one of the most revered classics of the western genre, aided by the later rising fortunes of almost all of the stars, an all-time epic Elmer Bernstein score, Eli Wallach's over-the-top portrayal of the villain, and by deservedly becoming the second most-played movie on TV in the last 50 years, after only The Wizard Of Oz.