In 1960 United Artists released The Magnificent Seven, directed by John Sturges.
The premise of the movie, a Western style re-make of Akira Kurosawa‘s 1954 Japanese film, Seven Samurai, featured a poor and oppressed Mexican village scraping together the money to hire a band of seven gunslingers to protect their village and women from an army of marauding bandits.
The movie stars among other men of steel, Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, James Coburn, Robert Vaughn, and Eli Wallach as the head of the bandits.
Some of these guys may be hard to remember today, but 50 years ago this movie propelled most of the actors to action hero super-stardom and cemented their positions as the toughest, coolest, and hardest movie stars of their time.
It’s been considered one of the greatest movie tough-guy ensembles of all time.
Last year, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”
In essence, Sylvester Stallone is trying to recapture some of that same tough guy, albeit older, action hero magic with The Expendables.
So it got us thinking. If we were going to cast an African American remake of the movie, who would we cast as the toughest and coolest action heroes today?
Here’s the criteria.
Is he black? Will your knees buckle if you see him coming at you in a dark alley? Can he command the lead character in an action blockbuster? Is he a legitimate tough guy? Does he have some element of swag? Does he have the requisite action hero portfolio or resume?
Check our the magnificent seven on the next page …