Red Sun

Directed by Terence Young, Red Sun follows a ruthless bandit (Charles Bronson’s Link Stuart) as he reluctantly teams up with a samurai warrior (Toshirō Mifune’s Kuroda Jubei) to track down the man (Alain Delon’s Gauche) responsible for stealing their valuable property. It’s a top-notch, thoroughly promising setup that’s employed to mostly underwhelming effect by Young, as the filmmaker, armed with Denne Bart Petitclerc, William Roberts, and Lawrence Roman’s screenplay, delivers a sluggish and hopelessly hit-and-miss endeavor that meanders its way through a plot riddled with questionable elements – with the picture’s tolerable atmosphere, then, due almost entirely to the personable, entertaining work of its three stars. (Mifune and Delon are superb here, of course, and yet there’s little doubt that Bronson’s loose, endlessly charming performance remains an obvious highlight.) Young’s thoroughly (and disappointingly) generic approach to the material ensures that Red Sun predominantly comes off as an almost paint-by-numbers buddy Western, although, by that same token, it’s worth noting that the movie does boast (and benefit from) a small handful of admittedly electrifying sequences and a marginally-improved second half – which ultimately does cement the whole thing’s place as a watchable (but consistently erratic) effort that generally feels like it should be much, much better.

** out of ****