The King of the Westerns is no different, this sucker has more testosterone in a single frame than most movies have in an hour. Let me give the names of some of the men starring in this movie : Yul Brenner, Steve McQueen, James Coburn, Charles Bronson. What you have here is not the cast of a 'Pride and Prejudice' remake, it's a list of the 1960's 'Most He-Manly, Macho, and Otherwise Legit Dudes.' Let's dive into this raging inferno of masculinity and see what we can find.
1) Never Back Down. Never Quit. Never Give In.
"Nobody throws me my own guns and tells me to run. Nobody." -Britt.
Taking on 30 bandits with 7 gunfighters and a handful of frightened farmers isn't any fighter's dream situation, but Chris and the rest of the Seven stay and fight to the death. Real men don't back down just because the odds get long. Even after Calvera takes control of the village, they don't bolt for the border, they don't make excuses, they get back in the fight.
2) Integrity First.
Chris: You forget one thing: we took a contract.
Vin: It's not the kind any court would enforce.
Chris: That's just the kind you got to keep.
This lesson ties in with the first. The Seven could have sold-out the villagers to Calvera and walked away without a fight and with their money. Throughout the whole movie there is nobody forcing them to stay and fight. The villagers can't do anything to them, the whole reason the Seven is down in Mexico is because the farmers were such poor fighters. Yet they stayed, even after the villagers sell them out. In the end the cost for their integrity is high: 4 out of the 7 die in the final battle. If righteousness was easy, it would be a perfect world.
3) This Quote: "You think I am brave because I carry a gun; well, your fathers are much braver because they carry responsibility... I have never had this kind of courage" -Bernardo O'Riley
4) Be a Good Mentor.
The only member of the Seven to hit it off with the village boys is easily the most unexpected one: Bernardo O'Riley. A grizzled, half Mexican, half Irish mercenary gunfighter with leather for a face, Bernardo doesn't exactly make you think 'emotional warmth' when you first see him. However, he manages to teach the village boys to get past their shallow, macho-man idea of manhood and concentrate on substance and character. You can be 'The Man', but if you don't pass it down, what you know is just going to die with you.
I have one more thing to say about this movie. It doesn't have anything to with manhood, it's just interesting. At the time of filming, the Mexican government was tired of having the country portrayed in American cinema as a filthy, stinking, uncivilized crap hole. To be allowed to film in the country, the producers had to portray the Mexican villagers in a more favorable light than first planned. First, the script was changed so the villagers first went to buy guns to defend themselves, only hiring gunmen after finding it would be cheaper. Second, all the villagers' clothes are always perfectly clean, no matter the situation. The Seven could get filthy, the bandits could get filthy, but never the villagers (watch the movie and you'll see what I'm talking about).
The Magnificent Seven: a film so amazing even political correctness couldn't ruin it.
