Terence Young’s Western Red Sun features three generational superstars in the form of Charles Bronson, Toshiro Mifune, and Alain Delon, and while the film isn’t exactly as epic as one might expect, it is nonetheless a fascinating experience.
The film begins with a Japanese ambassador boarding a train bound for Washington to visit President Ulysses S. Grant. Two samurais accompany him as his bodyguards, one of whom is Kuroda Jubei (Toshiro Mifune). The train also has one carriage full of gold shipments worth $400,000, protected by security officers. A gang of bandits, led by an American named Link (Charles Bronson) and a Frenchman named Gauche (Alain Delon), decide to rob the train with their posse. During the robbery, Gauche spots and steals a ceremonial Tachi sword, which is supposed to be a gift to the U.S. president from the government of Japan. After obtaining the gold and the sword, Gauche betrays Link and leaves him out to die. Link is determined to track down Gauche and recover the gold he took from him. The Japanese ambassador commands Kuroda to retrieve the sword and execute Gauche for killing one of the samurai and convinces a reluctant Link to allow Kuroda to accompany him to locate Gauche. Link and Kuroda have the same objective of finding Gauche but disagree on what to do with him. Kuroda plans to kill Gauche as soon as he gets his hands on the sword, but Link wishes to keep him alive until Gauche discloses where he has stashed the gold. Their plan to get to Gauche is through his girlfriend, Cristina (Ursula Andress). And so, begins the journey of Kuroda and Link to find Gauche through the American Wild West, as they must fight Gauche’s thugs and violent Comanches along the way.
Throughout their adventure, Bronson and Mifune share great chemistry together. There are a few humorous moments, most notably Link’s recurring bouts of frustration as he consistently fails to outrun Kuroda, who is always quick to catch up to him and even outpowers him in hand-to-hand fighting. Although Link is initially frustrated by Kuroda’s intransigence and unwillingness to be reasonable with him, he eventually comes to respect and admire Kuroda for the honorable and principled manner in which he conducts his life. In a touching scene, Kuroda laments the rapid modernization of Japan and the extinction of the samurais, a profession in which his family has been deeply rooted for the past 400 years. He considers himself a dying breed and thinks that by retrieving the Tachi sword and performing his duty as a Samurai, he can honor his ancestors.
There are a couple of very well-choreographed action scenes in the film. The film gets off to a perfect start thanks to a cleverly planned 20-minute opening action sequence. The second action sequence is the climactic showdown, which moves from an abandoned mission to the corn fields and becomes increasingly tense as the protagonists’ chances of survival become slim. Cinematographer Henri Alekan, who has also shot films like Wim Wender’s Wings of Desire (1987) and Jules Dassin’s Topkapi (1964), captures the picturesque landscape beautifully and paints a bleak vision of the West with abandoned sites and dangerous characters. For instance, there is a scene where Link and Kuroda arrive at a small, deserted village and learn that its inhabitants have presumably fled to avoid being attacked by the Comanches. On the negative side, the film’s representation of the Comanches is problematic because it shows them as stereotypical and mindless barbarians with no backstory or context.
The most admirable aspect of this film is how it gradually puts Kuroda’s objective at the forefront and subtly facilitates a shift in Link’s character arc—a man who cares about no one but gold. Charles Bronson is at the top of his game as Link, and he gets some of the film’s funniest and snappiest one-liners. Alain Delon is convincing as a rambunctious and unpredictable gunslinger whose designation of gauche (French for left) comes from the fact that he deals cards and shoots guns with his left hand. But the film belongs to Toshiro Mifune, as his storyline takes center stage, and he is just brilliant as a man imbued with honor and discipline in a setting where lawlessness and lawlessness alone are the norms, where gunslingers and outlaws have little regard for honor, and where honor is often viewed as a weakness.
You can watch the movie for free on MX Player.
Red Sun movie link: IMDB
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