The compass of the TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival) would cover all longitudes of cinema, and in some years, he succeeds. But I’m not a film critic. Unfortunately, Fuqua, Pizzolatto and Wenk stick to pretty stock exchanges and filler between isolated bits of action instead of inquiring into illuminating nooks and crannies of their characters. If I have a son named Chad, is he a remake of somebody else named Chad? No!
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“It’s good for everyone because movies are a shared experience”.
Festival-goers who shrugged off the opening-night movie could have found some sly counter-programming in the form of Ben Wheatley’s gleefully unhinged “Free Fire”, which kicked off the festival’s always popular Midnight Madness sidebar.
This is My First TIFF diary. With his long-time collaborator Denzel Washington Fuqua manages to craft a dusty, hardscrabble West that give the motley crew a chance to shine.
Fortunately, Fuqua soon heard on the grapevine that Jurassic World star Chris Pratt was a big fan of Westerns and reached out to discuss the actor’s potential involvement. And in 1960, United Artists had the bright idea to remake Seven Samurai as a western called The Magnificent Seven, which turned out to be a pretty good film (albeit not as good as Seven Samurai, although, to be fair, not much is). The film reunites Fuqua with Denzel Washington – the pair previously teamed to great effect for “The Equalizer” and “Training Day”. It’s just how press conferences are depicted in the movies.
Antoine Fuqua, the director of the remake of the 1960 western classic The Magnificent Seven has opened up about the diversity in the movie’s casting. “I’ve never seen her that happy”, he said, adding, kind of glumly: “I’ve been hanging out with her for 10 years”. Plus, it feels like a film designed for trailers – with countless witty one-liners, or shots of our heroes twirling guns around in their fingers only to dramatically place them back into the holsters on either side of the protagonist’s hips.
There is a festival-equation that the lack of interest of a film is offset by the attractiveness of its generic.
It may seem odd to have an nearly post-racial western, but Peter Sarsgaard’s cold-hearted villain makes clear this is more parable than pastiche. “I didn’t know how it would help me”, said Washington. “But in many ways, I also hate him”.
Most of the questions lobbed by members of the press, however, sounded uninspired and similar. For Fuqua, who grew up loving Westerns, it was important for him to cast a diverse group of actors to welcome moviegoers to a genre not known for inclusiveness. “The movie is just epic and people, I think, are really going to like it”.
On the positive side, there’s Denzel Washington looking, to put it in today’s terms, cool AF riding a horse.
Wisely, most of the names have been changed from the earlier film, although their general roles in the group are similar. That establishes the moral stakes for later on, when the seven take $20 apiece to head south of the border and fight alongside unarmed Mexican farmers who are one ravaged harvest away from destitution.
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For me, I too felt buzzed from seeing some of my favourite actors up close. Don’t just redo the thing people liked, redo it and explain it. Fuqua’s explanation does bring us to that incredible scene between Washington and Sarsgaard, but it also saps some of the original concept’s inspirational message.
