Not so fantastic...

Some occasional good dialogue, a lot of completely forgettable characters, a lot of the best lines from the original but without the gravitas, and one big gunfight that went on forever, and ever, and ever.

Wife and I saw it and our common opinion was: "We made it through it...".

At least in the original the gunfight felt somewhat meaningful, who was dodging bullets, and who was being shot be it bandit or gunslinger, mattered. And the characters were muuuuuuuuuuch better in the original.

Both Westerns pale compared to Seven Samurai, where the battles meant so much more, and the characters were so much more memorable. At least the original M7 tried to work in a random element like Toshiro Mifune's fake samurai in the person of the Mexican kid. Many pivotal moments in Seven Samurai, given this new treatment, meant little.

A lot of the elements of both earlier films were interwoven, different people died, but in similar ways, certain actions or scenes were recreated, but in the end the cast was ho hum, and the action was big, stupid, and went on fooooorever.

Where they took the story - fat cat greedy type versus small town was ok.

I was prepared to hate the inclusion of a random 'oriental' knifeslinger because it all started to look like a cliche of ragtag individuals or a weird boyband. Never mind the average level of racism in the frontier which would have made such an inclusive bunch highly improbable to say the least. Of course America likes to imagine its past heroes as enlightened sorts, not out-and-out racists and slavery apologists. Good luck finding such a bunch of cowboys that would have quietly accepted a Mexican, a native, and an Asian into their ranks... let alone a Baptist or a Catholic. But only bad guys were racists back in ye old frontier times we are told.

However, after Chris Pratt's gambler I was most attached to Byung-hun Lee's character. Sadly, the rest of the cast including Denzel left me wanting some greater reason to either care or remember them. Except the truly awful Ethan Hawke, who I wanted to die as soon as he appeared on screen.

It wasn't a terrible film, if you like to see horses blown up but not actually dying, or the same people being shot for half an hour in similar ways in a scene that made little sense, and just required that you accept cliche after cliche, you will think it is fantastic. People that think it was much more than average - I say see more films. At the very least see the two earlier films.