As usual, the structure of “The Magnificent Seven” is somewhat beautiful in its simplicity. An evil man must be stopped, and so seven guys get together and form an unexpectedly powerful team by combining their unique skill sets. As there’s not much to the narrative of a film like this one, its success or failure comes down to execution. And this one is too often flat. I kept waiting for it to click into gear, to use the joyful personalities of actors like Washington and Pratt to an end that felt like it was doing more than servicing the incredibly straightforward plot. Way too much of “The Magnificent Seven” plods from point A to point B to point C. And one can really feel this lack of momentum when the film does briefly spark to life. For example, seeing “Training Day” stars Hawke and Washington reunited and given one of the film’s only true dramatic scenes provides some much-needed depth of character, but it just never turns into a flame.

Part of the problem is that too much of this “Magnificent Seven” appears manufactured on a backlot. There’s zero sense of period and setting. Never once did I sense I was watching characters in a story so much as a talented group of actors assembled to create a product. The dialogue references concepts like righteousness and justice but there’s little sincerity in any of it. Part of the problem is also that “The Magnificent Seven” feels like a modern summer blockbuster as much as it does an ode to the Akira Kurosawa film. We’ve seen so many “assemblage of ragtag heroes” films in the years since the Sturges movie, and this version of "Magnificent Seven" seems to have as much in common with “The Avengers” as it does a Steve McQueen movie.

For some people, just getting this particular group of ragtag heroes together will be enough. And, to be fair, we may see films with this structure, but we don’t get star-powered westerns very often any more. The star power, especially with scene-stealers like Pratt and Hawke, can be blinding enough that genre fans won't see the wasted potential. They just forgot to take advantage of it.