Red Sun
The snow-capped mountains may resemble Mount Fuji but the majestic view across the plains is not that of Japan, though the train does convey the Japanese Ambassador to America, en route through Comanche territory to Washington to meet with the President to present him with a gift, stolen when the train is ransacked by bandits led by the left-handed New Orleans gambler and gunslinger known as “Le Main Gauche.”
Killing indiscriminately, even his own men in order to avoid further splitting the takings, left behind is Link Stuart whom Gauche presumed dead, forced by the Ambassador’s bodyguard Kuroda Jubei to guide him across the desert to locate his former associate and recover the precious gold-decorated sword, the samurai and the reluctant saddlemate poor travelling companions on an unlikely mission.
Directed by Terence Young who originated the James Bond film sequence, directing three of the first four Eon releases, Red Sun was a truly international co-production, filmed in Spain and financed by France and Italy and with stars from America, Japan, France and Switzerland, Charles Bronson, Toshirō Mifune, Alain Delon and Ursula Andress as Link, Kuroda, Gauche and Christina, favoured prostitute of Gauche whom Link holds as a bargaining chip.
Principally shot in Almería, spiritual home of the Spaghetti Western through the sixties, Red Sun was originally released in late 1971 in France and Italy as Soleil Rouge and Sole Rosso before making its way to America the following summer, but the spectacular scenery offers little distraction from the tired script which struggles to make Link interesting as hero or anti-hero, a marginally less odious bandit than the coldly psychopathic Gauche but with little to redeem him.
Kuroda’s honour and patience tested by his ostensible guide who repeatedly tries to escape or betray him, he is the more interesting character, afraid of the future and the changes coming to Japan as it increases contact with the outside world in the final decades of the nineteenth century, his devotion to duty a way of holding back the inevitable, and with the numerous action scenes flat and bloodless Maurice Jarre’s soundtrack is given the unenviable task of convincing the viewer that the film is much more exciting than the evidence warrants.
Restored in 4K for StudioCanal’s Cult Classics range, the new edition of Red Sun is supported by a fascinating twenty-minute profile of Mifune by Steven Okazaki, discussing his role in reviving the Japanese film industry after the Second World War and becoming a valuable Japanese cultural export, and a monochrome archive excerpt of behind the scenes footage shot on location featuring Bronson, Mifune, Delon, Andress and Young discussing their experiences on Westerns and on horseback.
