“The Magnificent Seven” (1960)
In general cinematic terms the apotheosis of the “ragtag gang on a mission” movie is undoubtedly Akira Kurosawa‘s masterpiece “Seven Samurai.” But we’re focussing on Hollywood, so we’ll instead include its most direct U.S. remake, “The Magnificent Seven” (which is itself coming up for a remake in Antoine Fuqua‘s Denzel Washington-starrer). He may not quite achieve the operatic, balletic grace of Kurosawa, but director John Sturges was no slouch in the lean, masculine moviemaking stakes (he was also behind superior motley-crew movie “Ice Station Zebra,” the genius “Bad Day at Black Rock” and “Gunfight at the OK Corral“) and he brings an elemental purity to this crackling western interpretation. The simplicity of the premise (mercenaries join forces to rid a village of marauding Mexican bandits) gives the iconic cast (Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, Robert Vaughn, Horst Buchholz, James Coburn and Brad Dexter) space to shine individually, clash internally and work as a team.
“Reservoir Dogs” (1992)
Ever walked across a car park wearing shades on a sunny day with a few friends and not audibly hummed the opening bars of “Little Green Bag”? Didn’t think so. Quentin Tarantino‘s career-making debut feature may be the leanest and least overstuffed of all his films, but it is still highly referential, and built out of recycled, repackaged genre tropes. One of them is the “getting the gang together” heist plot, used by everyone from Jules Dassin to Jean-Pierre Melville to Ringo Lam, Hong Kong director of “City on Fire” from which ‘Dogs’ liberally borrows. But Tarantino’s crackling, profane dialogue and chopped-up chronology give his debut a stylish piquancy all its own, with the interpersonal dynamics becoming far more important than the plotting, just as the characters, played indelibly by Tim Roth, Harvey Keitel, Steve Buscemi, Michael Madsen, Edward Bunker and Tarantino himself (alongside Lawrence Tierney and Chris Penn) become far more interesting than their monochromatic nicknames suggest.
“7 Women” (1966)
John Ford‘s final film is among his most atypical for featuring an almost all-female cast and for relocating its genre Western motifs to rural China. But it’s most interesting for the archetypes that remain unchanged, though they are embodied by women — from Anne Bancroft‘s swaggering, cynical outsider who emerges as the reluctant hero, to her chief internal antagonist, the mission leader played by Margaret Leighton, who rules over her small, largely female, empire like the autocratic mayor of a Wild West outpost. The two remain at loggerheads to the bitter end, but the other women of the mission (Sue Lyon, Flora Robson, Mildred Dunnock, Betty Field, Anna Lee) come to embrace Bancroft’s abrasive doctor. And when she proves her mettle when a marauding Mongolian warlord descends on the defenceless mission, it’s with an act of self-sacrifice that, while a testament to individualism, is also as moving an expression of “for the greater good” as any John Wayne vehicle ever mustered.
“The Killing” (1956)
A gigantic leap forward in terms of storytelling ambition and skill for director Stanley Kubrick, “The Killing” is a stunningly grimy little crime flick, about desperate people inevitably devolving towards betrayal and anticlimax, disguised as a B-movie heist thriller. Written by noir master Jim Thompson, it follows Johnny Clay (a fabulously weary-eyed Sterling Hayden), a veteran criminal who embarks on one last heist to try and set himself and his fiance up forever. The scheme to rip off the local racetrack is sound, and the team he assembles seems solid — a corrupt cop (Ted de Korsia), an inside man (Elisha Cook Jr), some hired muscle (Kola Kwariani), a track bartender (Joe Sawyer) and a sharpshooter (Timothy Carey). But things go pear-shaped due to the faithless wife of one of the conspirators (a brilliant Marie Windsor) and the taciturn, unsentimental efficiency of the crew turns tragic and bloody, culminating in one of the all-time great dumb-luck downer endings.
“Guardians Of The Galaxy” (2014)
We live in the age of the blockbuster team-up movie, and everything from “Star Trek” to “The Avengers” to “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” to the new “Ghostbusters” technically qualifies for this list. But the best modern exemplar of what we’re talking about, in that its gang is among the scrappiest and least likely of the all these unlikely team-ups, came in the shape of James Gunn’s delightful “Guardians of the Galaxy.” Fairly rote in plot, right down to the standard-issue underwhelming villain and chasing-a-doodad storyline, it was elevated by the quirky charms of Chris Pratt‘s bargain-bin Han Solo, Starlord, Bradley Cooper‘s chatty Raccoon Rocket, Zoe Saldana‘s unsmiling assassin Gamora, Dave Bautista‘s surprisingly funny Drax, and of course Vin Diesel as the lovable monosyllablic tree creature Groot. Mismatched team-ups don’t come much more diverse than that, but the comedic chemistry they worked up made ‘Guardians’ one of the most satisfying and distinctive of the increasingly interchangeable recent comic book tentpoles.
Even within the vague goalposts we set for ourselves, there’s plenty of other squads we could have included. More WW2 pics like “The Devil’s Brigade” “Where Eagles Dare,” “Hell Is For Heroes,” “The Great Escape,” “Ice Station Zebra,” “Saving Private Ryan,” “Operation Crossbow,” “A Walk In The Sun,” or “Inglourious Basterds,” or other war-themed movies like “The Wild Geese,” “The Expendables,” “Three Kings” or “Tropic Thunder.”
There’s also the con men of “The Sting,” the sci-fi saviors of “Sunshine,” the superheroes of “Avengers” or “X-Men,” the little squaddies of “Small Soldiers,” the disappointing big-screen translation of “The A-Team,” Team Zissou in “The Life Aquatic,” the Blood Pack in “Blade 2,” Wyatt Earp and the team in “Tombstone,” the cast of “Galaxy Quest” and the heroes of “Predator,” not to mention its more-fun-than-it-should-have-been reboot “Predators.”
Or there are the colonial marines in “Aliens,” the Channel 6 News Team in “Anchorman,” the crew of the titular ship in “Serenity,” the little heroes of “The Goonies” or “Time Bandits,” the space drillers in “Armageddon,” the “Star Trek” crew, the lost boys of both “Peter Pan” and “The Lost Boys,” the “Blues Brothers,” the monks of “Shaolin Soccer,” the “Fast & Furious” gang, the drinkers of “The World’s End,” the band in “Still Crazy,” and the IMF team of “Mission: Impossible” and its sequels. Anything else you think we should include? Let us know in the comments.