Review: Red Sun 4K UHD

4K UHD Blu-ray: Red Sun (1971)

Apparently, Red Sun is Quentin Tarantino’s favourite ‘spaghetti’ western, and it’s easy to see why. A mixture of French and Italian, the usual Spanish backdrop for filming, directed by Terence Young (once a  Bond director, who moved on action and this being his only western), and starring a stellar cast that includes Charles Bronson, Toshirō Mifune, Alain Delon, Ursula Andress, and Capucine. My God, how have I never seen this film!? And, hang on… Toshiro Mifune? & Samurai Mifune? Yep.

Link Stuart (Bronson) and Gauche (a delightfully evil and devilishly handsome swoony Alain Delon) are the leaders of a gang of desperados who hold up a train. Little do they know that the Japanese ambassador to Japan is on that very train, taking a gift to the President of America; a ceremonial tachi sword. After slaughtering most of the people on the train, Gauche decides take the sword, also killing one of the ambassador’s samurai bodyguards.

The gang then double cross and try to kill Link…unsuccessfully, because he’s then found by the remaining samurai bodyguard Kuroda (Mifune). The ambassador gives Kuroda one week to kill Gauche and recover the sword. If he fails, both Kuroda and the ambassador will have to commit hara-kiri losing the sword and dishonouring Japan.
And that’s just the first 10 minutes of the film.

Along the way they kidnap Gauches girlfriend (a very annoying, screamy, yet beautiful, Ursula Andress) who’s tortured in a very exotic way by some passing Comanches.

I guess I could write a review of this and mention cross culturalism, bigotry, racism and friendship, etc… and there is a really good essay waiting to be written about this movie, but two things stand out about it for me: you couldn’t imagine a samurai teaming up with a bandit, yet here it is, and it’s very entertaining and poignant. And here’s the clincher; we all love Charlie Bronson, but let’s face it, he plays Charlie Bronson in almost every film…. BUT in Red Sun, he ACTS, and it’s so noticeable!

This is a cracking film, and yet another that’s brand new to 60MW!

EXTRAS:

• On the set of Red Sun – Extract from Pour le cinéma (Director: Pierre Mignot © INA – 1971)
• NEW Interview with Steven Okazaki
• Original Trailer

RED SUN is available to buy on 4K UHD SteelBook, Blu-ray, DVD and Digital from 9th September 2024, and is available to pre-order HERE.

The Blu-ray edition will include four art cards.

Review by Tina from a disc kindly supplied by Studiocanal v ia Fetch Publicity.