Red Sun

Red Sun is not one of the most well respected spaghetti westerns. Face facts: in their time none of the spaghetti westerns were well respected, just populist vehicles for sex and violence. Made primarily for European audiences, they portrayed the wild west as brutal and dangerous, populated by mercenary thugs. They depicted violence, cruelty and outright criminality. In particular Once Upon A Time In The West shows the expansion of the US as being built out of exploitation, suffering and greed. As an outside view of American society they run against the nation-building narratives of the Hollywood westerns. "To see oursels as ithers see us!" There are no white hats. Might is destructive and oppressive, not right.

What make Red Sun a film of interest is its unusual cast and premise. In 1954, taking inspiration from a number of westerns, Akira Kurosawa made the cinematic masterpiece Seven Samurai. Toshiro Mifune co-stars as Kikuchiyo. In 1960 Yul Brynner's remake, The Magnificent Seven, co-stared Charles Bronson as Bernardo O'Reilly. Mifune and Bronson co-star in Red Sun as Kuroda Jubei and Link Stuart, bringing the Samurai and Western movie traditions together in a single film.

It is the back end of the 19th Century. The Japanese ambassador and entourage are travelling by train from San Francisco to Washington. They have a gift for the president of the United States: an exquisitely crafted Tachi. Gauche (Alain Delon) and his gang, along with Link, rob the train for the $400,000 it carries. After betraying Link, Gauche steels the sword. In order to retrieve both the sword and the twice stolen money, Jubei and Link have to team up. Their first stop is a brothel, to find Gauche's lover Cristina (Ursula Andress). With her in tow they seriously offend some Native Americans and head for the final showdown.

Driven, respectively, by honour and greed, their cultures clashing, Jubei and Link make a very odd couple, sometimes a comic duo. Mifune isn't so much the straight man as he is a Japanese Roadrunner to Bronson's caricature of an American, arrogant, self important and loud. Mifune never goes "Beep beep," he just has the look of a parent trying not to laugh at a precocious child. Bronson's comic talents are something you don't often get to see in his films.

The director, Terence Young, brings a number of elements from Japanese cinema into the film. For transitions he sometimes uses the wipes that Kurosaw used in Hidden Fortress - the ones that are now synonymous with Star Wars. Another trick he takes from Kurosawa is giving characters defining mannerisms. Compare the way that Gauche spins his pocket watch to the way that Mifune's ronin loosens his shoulders in Yojimbo. There is also the way he depicts the landscape, particularly at the end of the film when he uses tall grasses to mimic bamboo.

Apart from the occasional bit of ropey acting, the film has two big flaws. The depiction of Native Americans is not only racist, inaccurate and offensive. They behave stupidly to the point of disbelief and have a nonsensical disregard for their own lives. The other is the terrible score. The generic music is like the theme from a TV series blasting out without any relation to what's on the screen.

Red Sun is maybe not a good film but it is an interesting one that is also fun to watch. That's down to the chemistry between Bronson and Mifune.