Flying in the face of probability, Ethan Hawke has two Westerns in theaters at once: The Magnificent Seven and In a Valley of Violence. The difference? About $89 million and, here, Hawke screaming at a vulture.

Moseying away from the genre that established his often-brilliant career, indie-horror darling Ti West (The Innkeepers) saddles up for a simple tale of a Civil War vet en route to Mexico. Accompanied by his trusty attack dog (Jumpy, Pups United), Hawke’s Paul stops in the one-horse town of Denton, Texas (where the traffic has yet to suck), to sit a spell. The local bully, Gilly (James Ransome, Sinister 2), takes offense to this stranger not showing him the respect he believes he is owed, all because his bum-legged father is the town marshal (John Travolta, whose recent I Am Wrath revels in similar vengeful themes). Gilly and his yellow-bellied trio of lackeys commit two horrific acts of violence (true to the title), for which Paul vows revenge … assuming he lives through it.

There is not much to this Valley, which is entirely West’s intent as writer and director — not just here, but his work in general. The picture is streamlined, efficient — a straight-and-narrow cowboy’s hat tip to Sergio Leone’s Dollars trilogy of spaghetti Westerns, starting with co-opting its animated credits. It is John Wick set in the 19th century, trading neon for dust, business suits for boot spurs.

“Those men left me with nothin’,” Paul says. “I’m gonna leave them with less.” And the film shines as an example of less being more. While not totally giving up elements of horror (read: blood spurts and spills with gory aplomb), West proves his minimalist approach to visual storytelling works as well on the frontier as it does in provoking fright. Hawke is reliably strong, while Travolta is tempered from his tendency to ham. The pic, however, belongs to Ransome, stealing the spotlight as he adds another role of weaselly menace to his mantle. —Rod Lott

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To put a superlative in the title of your film is asking for trouble. When that film is a remake of a bona fide classic, you’re also inviting trouble in, setting an extra place at the dinner table and prepping the guest room with a set of fresh towels. Such is the problem facing Southpaw director Antoine Fuqua with The Magnificent Seven, his update on the iconic 1960 Western. Given that John Sturges’ “original” is itself a remake of another vaulted treasure of the cinema, Akira Kurosawa’s 1954 epic, Seven Samurai, it’s not a stretch to say Fuqua also has listed trouble as the beneficiary of his life insurance policy.

Following Training Day and The Equalizer, this new Seven marks the third collaboration between Fuqua and leading man Denzel Washington, who more or less has the Yul Brynner role here and certainly has the quiet intensity for it. His Sam Chisolm, “duly sworn warrant officer from Wichita, Kansas,” eels out a living by collecting the rewards on wanted men. Although on the side of justice, when Chisolm accepts the assignment that gets this film’s engine cranking, he does so not out of empathy, but because it pays well. That gig is ridding the one-street town of Rose Creek of the snakelike land-grabber Bartholomew Bogue (Peter Sarsgaard, Black Mass), whose takeover plan includes murdering anyone who dares raise a voice against him, thereby making an immediate widow of freckle-faced Emma Cullen (Haley Bennett, The Girl on the Train).

It is she who offers Chisolm a literal sack of money to knock Bogue down several pegs. To assist in the highly suicidal mission, Chisolm recruits a cocky gunslinger (Chris Pratt, Jurassic World), a sharpshooter (Ethan Hawke, Sinister), a God-fearing tracker (Vincent D’Onofrio, TV’s Daredevil), a Mexican bandit (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, TV’s From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series), a knife-wielding Asian (Byung-hun Lee, G.I. Joe: Retaliation) and an arrow-slinging Comanche Indian (Martin Sensmeier, TV’s Westworld).

The band-assembly process consumes the film’s first act, with the second devoted to planning for Bogue’s siege, and the third, naturally, depicting said siege. The Magnificent Seven starts fine and just gets better and better as it goes along, finally reaching that lofty adjective of its title. The siege of Rose Creek is an all-out battle of bullets and bombs, and it makes for an invigorating extended set piece of action cinema. Because, by that first-shot-fired point, the individual members of Team Seven have come to care for one another (or what passes for it in such a heteronormative genre that lionizes the he-man), so do we, setting high dramatic stakes.

As old as storytelling itself, the plot of revenge — especially one that pits the powerless against the powerful — is so primal, so universal, it does not take much work to get audiences all in on the protagonists’ side. Fuqua and his screenwriters Richard Wenk (The Expendables 2) and Nic Pizzolatto (TV’s True Detective), could have coasted on that, but they are too smart to squander the opportunity of painting this blockbuster canvas. While the movie is guilty of several points of cliché, it continually surprises. Bennett’s headstrong Cullen is such a vital link in the chain, she practically makes the case for adding a one to the name. Stealing scenes and earning laughs is not Pratt, but D’Onofrio, in an out-there performance that somehow works as an emotional anchor. Washington enjoys the best of both worlds, in that he not only radiates the good-guydom of a genuine movie star (right from his John Wayne entrance), but gets to exercise his considerable acting chops, most notably exhorting Bogue to pray.

Imbued with mythicism and emboldened by its multicultural cast, The Magnificent Seven breathes new life into the Western while also sticking closely to its old template: same bones, just different meat. We are denied hearing Elmer Bernstein’s Oscar-nominated theme from the ’60 Seven until the end credits begin, as if Fuqua was waiting until he felt he had earned the right to play it. Once that forever-rousing number kicks in, you agree that he has, because you still can feel the rush held over from the previous scenes. —Rod Lott

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Rambles uncredited narrator Kenne Duncan (The Astounding She-Monster) at the beginning of Revenge of the Virgins, not all Old West tales were born from truth. Some of them were “conceived in the minds of grizzled old prospectors … consumed by their one dream … convinced that he’d one day hit the biggest bonanza of all.”

Doesn’t that description sound like good ol’ Ed Wood? It should not surprise you that a picture this boring was written by the wrong-reasons legendary Wood, under the pen name of Pete La Roche; after all, when you hear that the black-and-white Western has a running time of 53 minutes, you automatically assume someone of suspect talents had a hand in its making … because the other hand was busy, as Revenge of the Virgins exists so the members of its all-female Indian tribe can parade around topless. Although led by a blonde Caucasian (Nona Carver, 1963’s Terrified), the tribe of “ornery redskins” hates the white man and his dadgum Christianity.

Thus, when prospector Pan Taggart (Stanton Pritchard, Like Wow!) guides the greedy Melvin (Charles Veltmann Jr., 1960’s The Alamo) and his harpy wife (Jodean Russo, Airport) into tribal land in hopes of finding gold, the lady Indians stop dancing naked in circles long enough to fling some arrows their way. Incidentally, the girls don’t wear quivers, so where are they keeping those arrows?

And that’s all there is to this quick-buck pic of buck-naked chicks. Directed by sexploitationist Peter Perry Jr. (Kiss Me Quick!), the whole thing looks to have been shot along a neighborhood greenbelt. An attack by a fake rattlesnake stands as the sexless film’s most engaging moment, but that’s because you’re busy seeing if you can spot the wire. You can. —Rod Lott

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In this Western-themed anthology (not to be confused with the AMC martial-arts series of the same name) of three tumbleweed-laden tales, The Hateful Eight’s Bruce Dern and his teeth star as morally corrupt bounty hunter T.L. Barston, roaming the prairie in search of his next $50 kill. For everyone he runs across, we see bad things start to happen to them.

Take wanted outlaw McComas (Dylan McDermott, Olympus Has Fallen): No sooner has he crossed paths with Barston than he’s being hit on by a saloon whore played by Twister’s Helen Hunt! Oh, the humanity! They have sex. Not as cruel, he then gets shot by the town sheriff (Andrew Robinson, Hellraiser).

Into the Badlands’ next pointless yarn: Homely Alma Heusser (Mariel Hemingway, Bad Moon) is attacked by wolves. Finally, that sonofabitch Barston gets a taste of his own medicine, courtesy of some ghostly bandits.

From Zandalee director Sam Pillsbury, this made-for-cable flick is dull and boring, in that made-for-cable sorta way, despite a cowpie-sized dollop of horror elements. —Rod Lott

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Depending on who you ask, Adiós, Sabata may or may not be the second entry in the series that began with 1969’s Sabata and ended with 1971’s The Return of Sabata.

The reason? Whereas the bookend films starred Lee Van Cleef as the master gunslinger, Adiós cast Yul Brynner as not Sabata, but Indio Black. The title change was just a cash-in. Still, it works logically enough as a sequel; under the Americanized name of Frank Kramer, Gianfranco Parolini directed all three and, more importantly, Brynner’s character is every bit the stoic badass Van Cleef was.

In 1867, Mexico is a hotbed of revolution, and some of its participants (some of whom sport Afros) aim to steal a chest full of gold from your average detestable Austrian colonel (Gérard Herter, The Big Gundown), he of the mustache and monocle. Never one to make an honest buck, Sabata Indio agrees to help.

“Can I go with you?” asks a boy in the village. “I make very good tortillas!”

As with the original Sabata, gimmicks play a large part of Adiós‘ appeal, from Indio’s sawed-off shotgun hiding a cigar compartment to one of his hombres being a man who hurls metal balls with pinpoint accuracy, using his foot. These touches and others lift this spaghetti Western above the fray. When gold is glimpsed, Parolini’s camera spins ’round and ’round; it’s easy to feel the joy with this one. —Rod Lott

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