Denzel, Fuqua debut a more modern ‘Magnificent Seven’

The cast also includes Chris Pratt, Ethan Hawke, Vincent D’Onofrio, Lee Byung-hun, Haley Bennett, Martin Sensmeier and Manuel Garcia-Rulfo.

Reuniting two-time Academy Award victor Denzel Washington with his “Training Day” director Antoine Fuqua (not to mention co-star Ethan Hawke) the trio brings the big screen their boldest collaboration yet.

Fortunately for Fuqua – and moviegoers at Thursday’s TIFF gala world premiere – he doesn’t have to do much more with this remake of a remake than cast wisely and have everybody hit their marks when the shooting starts, which the action director presents with his usual violent flair. “We don’t talk about it because you guys [the media] talk about it”, said Fuqua. My idea was: If Denzel walks into a room, the room stops.

The film is such a departure that its star, Washington, did not even make an effort to see 1960’s The Magnificent Seven, which starred Yul Brynner, Eli Wallach, Steve McQueen, and Horst Buchholz. Having seen the other versions, I could project my memories on to the new faces, even if they had no names and nothing to say. “I just didn’t know how it would help me”.

Washington is Sam Chisolm, a bounty hunter with very personal reasons for battling pompous, sadistic industrialist Bartholomew Bogue (played by Peter Sarsgaard for maximum oily villainy).

At least the location of the Magnificent Seven and diversity carefully developed its distribution were they allowed Piers Handling, director of the Toronto Film Festival, to salute, in his opening speech on “sacred ground” once populated by “first Nations”, which is organized the biggest festival of the Americas, before congratulating the “diversity” of the 2016 edition of the program. But it’s probably a lot more The Wild Bunch than it is The Magnificent Seven.

Fuqua said that the DNA of Seven Samurai was more important to him in any case.

But while the film came out guns blazing to open the Toronto International Film Festival on Thursday, early reviews indicate its aim isn’t always true.

“People say the Western is dead nearly as often as they say film is dead”, BBC writer Sam Adams said, following the debut of “Magnificent”. “I’m at the Toronto film festival and I got to play a cowboy, you tell me if it’s a good thing”. The film does correlate with the real world too, to make for a distinctly perennial tale, of a defenceless area being overtaken by a tyrant, a sad state of affairs which occurs all over the world. If we were sticking to just one way of doing something then all westerns would be all white guys looking like John Wayne. Following the premier the movie was panned by critics. Like any modern revisionist retelling, Fuqua’s multicultural actioner is a product of its time – a fact that audiences will have to take or leave as The Magnificent Seven roars out of the gate striking an odd balance of reverent facsimile and winking postmodernism. “It became evident that we loved working together”. “But there’s a great deal of waiting around for something to happen”.

When redundant remakes litter the screens it’s churlish to complain about the redux of a Western, especially one as storied as The Magnificent Seven.