Denzel Washington plays Sam Chisolm, the bounty hunter who heads up a rogue team of mavericks enlisted as a ragtag defense force by a beleaguered Western village in Antoine Fuqua’s retooling of John Sturges’ 1960 original (itself based on Akira Kurosawa’s classic Seven Samurai). Washington, who steps into the role played by Yul Brynner spoke to the HFPA in Toronto. “My father was a minister. We grew up in a church and we didn’t go to the movies. So I didn’t grow up Westerns. King of Kings and The Ten Commandments and that was it. I didn’t really grow up watching Westerns or anything like that. And it wasn’t like some childhood dream that I wanted. So I didn’t have any romantic idea of a Western. And I just liked the script and trusted Antoine, he is a wonderful filmmaker and obviously we have had great success together. So when he called me up, I read it and I was like, I like this, this is a good idea, it’s fun. And just to shoot guns and ride horses and I read the script and I knew that we were going to win.”