This includes New York-born, Jewish Eli Wallach playing the lead Mexican outlaw Calvera, and a German-born actor playing a guy named Chico.
The diverse character backgrounds make for a much more interesting team of seven.
While the transplanting of the story to a location north of the border meant that most of the side characters were white rather than Hispanic, the leads were much more diverse.
While the bulk of the action in the original film took place in Mexico, the vast majority of the lead actors were white.