Jack Horne
Unlike Bogue, you can’t question the sincerity of the bear-like trapper Jack Horne (Vincent D’Onofrio). But his sanity? Yeah, that’s up for debate.
We see Horne’s well-thrown hatchet before we get a glimpse of Horne himself. It’s embedded in the back of a guy who, admittedly, stole Horne’s gun, thwacked Horne over the head with a stone and left him for dead. Horne kills the guy and his brother, telling a band of curious onlookers—the band of desperados who’ll eventually become the Magnificent Seven—that by “by the Lord and by the Law” he had the right to take their lives.
Throughout the rest of the film, Horne quotes Scripture, prays and generally utters “the Lord” whenever he opens his mouth. And yet he’s probably the most frightening of all the Seven, killing with brutal abandon instead of lethal precision. Someone asks him if he still collects scalps.
As such, there’s an uncomfortable dichotomy in play with Horne—a man who follows the Prince of Peace but so clearly is at home in the world of war. We know he’s not alone: Religion has been used to motivate passionate, sometimes unhinged people to do some terrible things. And while Horne uses his bloody skills in a more positive direction this time (at least according to the movie’s bloody frontier logic), we know the guy’s always walking on a hatchet’s edge.
Caution: Spoilers are coming.
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