It is very hard to believe that this great movie, “The Pursuit of Happyness”, arguably Will Smith’s best performance came out almost 10 years ago.  The best part about this film is the unbelievable story and the fact that all that happens in this movie is true.  Chris Gardner, who is played by Will Smith, was a man in his 30’s who was always just about go to under financially. He was married, with one young son and his latest and riskiest current method of making a living was buying and then selling portable x-ray machines.  There are several scenes in the beginning of this movie showing a large number of these x-ray machines in Gardner’s apartment which meant that now that he had invested in so many of them, he now had to sell all of them to make a profit.  The contrast between the extremely intelligent man we grow to know Gardner is, compared to the man he was at the beginning of the movie who is trying to sell portable x-ray machines is one of the most amazing parts of this story.

The terrifying message behind this film is that homelessness can come to any of us and all it might take are just a few bad decisions or stupid mistakes which very often are born out of desperation. I know this first hand because some years ago when I was 19 years old, I was homeless on a bus myself. The beginning of this great film shows Gardner trying and mostly failing at his attempts to sell portable x-ray machines to different doctors and hospitals in the area.  As Gardner’s desperation grows, his marriage goes from bad to worst and eventually his wife, played by Thandi Newton leaves him to raise their son, played by Will Smith’s own son Jaden Smith alone. What follows are horrible scenes of standing in the lines of homeless shelters and sleeping overnight in very depressing locations including the men’s room of a subway with his young son.  What is worse and more depressing about all this is that Gardners 7-year-old son is along for this horrible ride through the horrors of homelessness.  His cries of desperation and constant questions to his father as to what is going on is heartbreaking and at times impossible to watch.

The other part of this movie is the most triumphant part and what turns this from a story of tragic disaster into a story of survival . Through an intern program with a major financial institution, Gardner sees an opportunity to save his life and the life of his son. But when he enrolls he has no idea that the intern program, which hires only a small percentage of the interns in the program as full-time employees, pays no money.  This only leads to more homelessness and desperation for Gardner and his son and Gardner’s pursuit of this last-ditch effort to save his life and survive is one of the most inspiring I have ever seen in any movie.

The end of this movie, which I will not spoil, has one of the most emotional endings I have ever seen in any movie and because of this last scene, Will Smith should have won his first Academy Award, although he was nominated.

If you have never seen the Pursuit of Happyness you owe it to yourself to see it because it is a one of a kind great movie. The movie spells Happiness “Happyness” for reasons that are not really explained in the movie, but I can only figure that they wanted the word Happy fully spelled out somewhere in the title. Another message from this movie would be that to be happy, like everything else in life, there is a price to pay.

The original “The Magnificent Seven” came out in 1960, and is considered a classic movie western. So like the recent Ben Hur remake Hollywood has decided to remake another classic movie. However, unlike Ben Hur which came out a few weeks ago and was mostly a bad movie, this remake of the Magnificent Seven was very well done. The story like the first movie is very simple. A bad man tries to take over a town by killing and terrorizing its citizens and then steals not only their land but all their gold. The evil villain in this movie is played extremely well by Peter Sarsgaard and seemed to have an innate ability to completely embody evil during this entire film. Even his IMDB picture shows him making a rather evil looking face.

Denzel Washington is also very good in his role and I think this is the only Western he has ever made during his long career. The rest of the cast includes Ethan Hawke, Vincent D’Onfrio and Chris Pratt and they all do outstanding jobs in this movie. Haley Bennet is also very good in her role as one of the residents of the town that was destroyed by the evil businessman, losing her husband in the process.

Of course, any remake of the original Magnificent Seven would not be as good as the original, but this one does stand on its own as an excellent movie. The original story has changed somewhat in this remake, making it unique enough for any die-hard lover of the original movie be curious enough to want to see this remake. The story is one we have seen before about injustice, an evil villain businessman who steals the property of poor townspeople and eventually revenge as the townspeople hire these seven men to stand up to the evil businessman and his army to rightfully take back what is theirs. Stories like this appeal to almost everyone because in our own lives most all of us want the good guy to win and the bad guy to get what he deserves; ultimately for something that is massively wrong to become right. Unfortunately, very often in real life this is not way things work out but we all want them to, just so everything makes sense in the end like it does in the movies.

The action sequences in this movie are very impressive and I have always been amazed at the logistical problems directors of action movies like this must have to overcome so there are no injuries to any of the actors, extra’s or horses that are used in so many scenes. The director Antoine Fuqua did an excellent job with this movie which must have been a logistical nightmare with the hot desert heat, very complex shooting and action scenes involving horses and even explosives. This movie reminds us of the mid 1800’s and how dangerous it was to live in the West in those days as murder, lynching and the lack of any real laws made living in that time extremely difficult. Just about everybody had a gun and would use it it seems just about every day. I thought this movie was very well done and I do recommend it.