RED SUN (1971) CHARLES BRONSON, ALAIN DELON AND TOSHIRO MIFUNE

RED SUN (1971) – I had originally planned to review this international production during Frontierado Season of 2025, but French superstar Alain Delon’s recent death made me decide to post it now. Red Sun was a French-Italian co-production starring America’s Charles Bronson, France’s Alain Delon and Japan’s Toshiro Mifune in a Spaghetti Western.   

Directing the film was Terence Young, who had helmed Dr. No and From Russia with Love. Ursula Andress and Capucine added to the massive international star power.

Red Sun is set in 1870. The new Japanese Ambassador to the United States, along with his retinue and bodyguards, arrived in California and as the movie opens is traveling via train across the West in order to reach Washington DC. Ambassador Sakaguchi is bringing with him an ancient Japanese sword as a gift for President Ulysses S. Grant.

The train also carries a shipment of gold targeted by a gang of outlaws led by a charismatic but cruel man called Gauche (Alain Delon) and his longtime partner in crime Link Stuart (Charles Bronson). The bandits rob the gold as the train passes through the western deserts. Gauche displays his callous ruthlessness by not caring that he has to kill an innocent passenger while gunning down a man trying to play hero.

Despite the best efforts of samurai Kuroda Jubei (Toshiro Mifune) the gunslinging outlaw leader even steals valuables from the Ambassador’s party, including the sword intended for President Grant. This sets in motion the rest of the storyline.         

ALAIN DELON masterfully portrays Gauche, coldly professional and indifferent to any loss of life on the part of his victims OR his fellow gang members. During the robbery, he not only kills one of Kuroda’s subordinate samurai but tries to kill off his partner Link in the same explosion that blows open the vault containing the gold. 

Gauche and the rest of his numerous bandits scatter. He takes his four closest colleagues to a remote spot in the desert and buries the stolen gold, then shoots all four of them to death so that only he knows where the loot is located.

He then meets up with the rest of the gang, and token handouts of gold satisfy them since only Gauche and Link knew that the haul was worth a total of FOUR HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS (here in 2024 that would be worth 9.6 BILLION).

TOSHIRO MIFUNE as Kuroda Jubei brings his veteran samurai panache to the film. He and the ambassador keep Link Stuart alive but in custody so that he can lead Kuroda to Gauche in order to recover the ceremonial sword.

The gold doesn’t concern them, but if the sword is not brought back within a week, Kuroda and the ambassador will have to commit ritual suicide over their loss of honor. That loss of honor covers not only the sword but the death of the samurai killed by Gauche.

Kuroda has the disarmed Link lead him into the desert on their quest. Tensions run high between them at first, and Bronson’s character tries to escape multiple times but Mifune’s wily character thwarts him each time.

I give a lot of credit to Bronson for going along with scenes in which his Link Stuart is outfoxed by Kuroda AND outfought in hand-to-hand combat with him. It shows a certain sense of security in himself and his screen image. Compare that to today when people like Vin Diesel and the Rock have it written into their contracts that their characters can’t lose an onscreen fight. 

Charles gets to shine in later scenes that call for gunplay and a figurative chess match with the cunning Gauche, so Bronson fans with patience will get to see him command several scenes.

CHARLES BRONSON plays Link Stuart with aplomb, even in a few humorous bits. Like an Old West variation of The Defiant Ones, he and Kuroda are figuratively chained together and stuck with each other as they trail their quarry. 

Eventually the samurai’s strict code of honor wins begrudging respect from Link, just as that bandit’s crude nobility comes to impress Kuroda. We viewers can tell from Bronson’s performance (Stop laughing. I’m being serious.) that with Mifune he feels a vague sense of loyalty that he mistakenly thought he shared with Delon’s Gauche. The same feeling of brotherhood Link has been trying to recapture ever since he left the army.  

I’m far from the first person to praise the screenplay, but I am always blown away by the conversations between Link and Kuroda in which they bond over their recognition of shared obsolescence. With the Meiji Restoration in Japan in 1868, the samurai can feel the unstoppable changes to his nation’s culture and his own way of life. He foresees a time when that way of life will be no more. 

Link possesses enough savvy and insight to see the parallels with his own situation. His gunslinging lifestyle is also on borrowed time in the big picture. The inevitable settlement of the American west will bring with it citification and enough law enforcement personnel to end his own way of life. 

Under Terence Young’s direction, none of this is ham-fisted. He gives the audience credit for being perceptive enough to get the film’s meaning without being hammered over the head with it. For their part, Bronson and Mifune provide Young with the perfect avatars of two warriors from different cultures forced to work together and recognize their shared future plight. Delon’s overwhelming screen presence provides the necessary gravitas for the villain role.

URSULA ANDRESS is in the part of Cristina, no last name given. Young gets a decent performance out of Andress, and she does the most that could probably be done with her character. Cristina is a saloon girl who has bounced between Gauche and Link over the years but has currently attached her wagon to Delon’s character since he can offer most of a $400,000,000 fortune for the two of them.

The film’s almost half over by the time Kuroda and the now-armed Link fight their way through enough dangers and members of Delon’s gang to reach the bordello where Cristina is employed. Since Link feels that Gauche will likely show up sooner or later to pick up Andress, he and Kuroda barricade her in a room and wait.

CAPUCINE appears briefly as Pepita, the madame of the brothel where Cristina works. Her character is an old friend of the gang that Link and Gauche belonged to and she disapproves of the villain’s greedy double cross of Bronson when she learns about it.

She and Link pass the night together while one of Pepita’s ladies, Maria (Monica Randall) beds down with Kuroda in another part of the building. 

SPOILERS AHEAD!

Gauche has four of his men show up the next morning to take Cristina to him. Link and Kuroda kill three of the four and send the last one to tell Gauche that they are willing to accept an exchange – Cristina for the Japanese sword and Link’s portion of the gold. The exchange ground will be an abandoned mission just over a day’s ride away.

The woman escapes our heroes enroute to the mission, but falls into the hands of some renegade Comanches, one of whom she kills. Before too long, Bronson and Mifune free her in a raid and ride on to the mission.

At that mission, Gauche and his men outmaneuver Link and Kuroda, but the rest of the Comanches arrive in the middle of all the chaos. We get some samurai vs Native American action as our heroes, Cristina AND Gauche & his men must join forces to ultimately drive off the Comanches. Only our four main stars survive.

Lacking all sentimentality, Gauche is about to shoot Link, who has used his last bullets. Kuroda interferes with the villain but remembers his earlier promise to Bronson to let him kill Gauche. Delon seizes the moment to mortally wound the samurai, which gives Link an opening to grab a rifle.

Ever nefarious, Gauche confidently taunts Bronson that if he kills him he’ll never know where the gold is. Link forfeits the wealth and instead honors his camaraderie with Kuroda by blowing away the villain. Our hero takes the Japanese sword from the dead Gauche and vows to the dying Kuroda that he will get it back to Ambassador Sakaguchi in time to prevent his ritual suicide.

Cristina, in true femme fatale fashion, shrugs off the loss of Gauche and tries to vamp Link into helping her search for the buried gold. Bronson’s not having it and rejects her. As the movie comes to a close, Link manages to turn over the sword to the ambassador without getting nabbed by the law. 

Red Sun runs an hour and fifty-two minutes but not one minute feels wasted. To prevent this review from being twice as long I omitted the details of many of the action set pieces packed into this milestone western.

This is a quality film in just about every way. In my opinion its scale and production values will appeal even to non-fans of westerns.