The Magnificent Seven: Courage Over Cowardice
Despite its age, The Magnificent Seven (1960) stands firm as a timeless piece of cinema and a movie our culture desperately needs to revisit. With some old western shoot-em-up violence, mild language, and adult concepts, this movie is not for younger audiences. It is a Magnificent movie that embodies selfless bravery.
There's a lot to like about this movie. It serves as the template for subsequent films such as the Three Amigos and A Bugs Life. However, there's a quality in The Magnificent Seven that has become a rarity in modern entertainment. It gives a terrific model for the embodied bravery that both boys and girls should aspire to have. While scripture gives excellent examples of brave men and women in action, seeing supplemental and relatively modernized characters can serve our children's mental pictures of bravery. Throughout The Magnificent Seven, vivid and contrasting images of courage and cowardice are on full display.
The movie opens with a Mexican farming village plagued by the tyrannical and bullying tactics of the ravaging Calvera gang. Calvera steals their food and what few riches they have, murdering anyone who stands in their way. The farmers were not brave men, but some desired to be bold and learn to fight back. These men went across the border seeking aid. Across the wall, the scene opens with a town facing its own dilemma. We find a blockade of men refusing to let a Hearst carriage with a deceased Indian pass to the cemetery on top of the hill for burial. No one was willing to face this barricade of armed men. At this junction, we meet our two main gunslinging heroes: Chris Adams (Yule Brynner) and Vin Tanner (Steve McQueen). Without a second thought, Adams jumps onto the carriage to drive it past the blockade. Without persuasion, Tanner agrees to ride shotgun (literally) and be Adam's cover. There was no tension or internal struggle within the character's psyche, and no flashback sequences of the two men's childhood. We never need to be told that they are heroes. There's no exposition telling us they are brave men or what we should think about them. Their decisive actions convey to us all we need to know. They gave no long speech about the morality of prejudice and no monologue on the wrongness of not giving an Indian a proper burial. The heroes acted. The noble actions of the hero assumed their stance on the moral issue in question. They weren't the heroes because they were necessarily the biggest and strongest. They were heroes because they did the right thing despite the possible consequences.
The heroes had little trouble with the roadblock. After the short battle and celebration, the Mexican farmers approached and recruited Adams to help them. Adams agreed and, along with Tanner, formed a posse. The Magnificent Seven would ride to put an end to the Calvera gang once and for all.
Here are some additional thoughts on the movie…
Returning to the Fight: The Virtue of Being led by conviction
There was a time in the story when the Seven had an ultimatum. Calvera coerced them into giving up—placed before them was the temptation to ignore the problem and allow comfort and cowardice to triumph over courage and conquest. They chose courage over cowardice, even though it could cost them everything. The conviction of doing the right thing, whatever the cost, drove them back to the fight.
“We're Just Farmers”: The False Virtue of Doing Nothing on Principal
Caving into the pressures and demands of the tyrant Calvera was easy and allowed for survival. Not everyone in the village was keen on the heroes helping them. "We're just farmers," the leader of the town protested. The implication was that they were to be content with their allotment in life. While the Bible teaches much about contentment (Philippians 4:10-14). It is essential not to confuse the virtue of Godly contentment with the false virtue of passivity. Despite our role in life, we are called to be brave. Doing nothing when you're called to fight and protect is giving into cowardice.
Brash and Hot-Headed: The False Virtue of Being Hasty
The hot-head Chico (Horst Buchholz), one of the Seven, was desperate to prove himself as one of the brave gunslingers. His brash and youthful angst contrasted against Adams and Tanner's stoic maturity. Chico's character arch was one of the driving themes of the movie, showcasing his coming to grips with his past and realizing that being a hero is more than just raw machismo and skill. The stoic hero is going the way of the dodo in Hollywood, which is no minor tragedy. The Magnificent Seven portrays the protagonists as calm, confident, and courageous, and that ought to be imitated. There is a godly way to be masculine. Boys need to see stoic and godly masculinity lived out. They then need to emulate that behavior, so they may, too, grow to be that way.
"We Always Lose": The Plight of the Rambling Gunslinger
The story concludes with the remaining heroes (spoiler alert, they don't all make it) looking back at the Mexican farming village. Because of the Seven's courage and sacrifice, the farmers won their freedom. However, Adams said something before riding off: "we always lose." The heroes reflected that a peaceful home and hearth is the true victory. Heroic gunslinging, as an end to itself, was never the intended purpose of where we find peace. Although they won the fight, Adams identified his lot in life as unsettled. He was a gunslinger, a rambler in the wilderness. He would never have a proper home in this world. It is the same for Christians. The Magnificent Seven is by no means advocating for the Christian reality that this world is not our home, but it does show an unsettledness that all Christians should feel.
Our focus must be like that of Abraham, who had his hope focused on a home that had internal foundations whose maker was God himself (Hebrews 11:10). We lose in this life, not in the sense that we're not victorious, but in the sense that until Christ's return all victories are simply shadows. We live in a perpetual state of divine discontent, anxiously awaiting the consummation of all things (Romans 8:18–24, Revelation 22:20). Until that day, we must choose courage over cowardice.
