This again was another attempted transfer from Seven Samurai to Magnificent Seven that doesn't quite work. In Seven Samurai, Kyuzo (played by Seiji Miyaguchi) is a master samurai. He isn't a different kind of samurai than the others, he is a SUPERIOR samurai than the others. He is the very embodiment of the samurai code, and has developed a level of skill in excess of all the other samurai. He is the perfect samurai. In the Magnificent Seven, Britt (played by James Coburn) we aren't told that he is the perfect gunslinger, what we see is a quirky and unique trait of fighting with a knife than a gun. We aren't told, for instance that he was so masterful with a gun that he gave them up because he wanted to prove he was better by being even faster with a knife despite the disadvantages. Why would a gunslinger in the Old West try to prove this while giving an advantage to their opponent? As you have pointed out, this is vanity, because being faster with a knife is still putting yourself a big disadvantage. It's likely such a person would not live long in the Old West. Even if the knife DID reach the target first, the opponent could easily squeeze of a shot before dying, if only as a muscle contraction. Therefore, it is more of a willful quirk on the part of Britt, and I doubt there is any historical basis for such a thing in the annals of the West, and thus, he lacks the resonance that the Kyuzo character had. And thus, the idolizing of Britt makes less sense in the American version.
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Otter (24464)
3 years ago
Well said! I've said before that some things don't really transfer from the original Samurai setting to the Old West, including a shaven-headed foreigner with the mindset of a Bhuddist monk (although Brynner is a good enough actor to convince everyone that it's not weird).
Because yes, a gun has a far longer range than a knife, it's got multiple bullets, a bullet hit is more likely to be deadly or disabling because it's got more force, etc. Frankly, the only way a person could survive in the imaginary world of Old West gunfighters quick-drawing and dueling each other on the smallest pretext, is to throw his knife well before the guy with the gun is ready to draw. And how would that go over, in a world where all the gunfighters and mercenaries know each other? Probably not real well...
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