Blu-ray Film Review | StudioCanal

Red Sun (1971) • Blu-ray [StudioCanal, Cult Classics] — Eastern meets Western in an absorbing off-beat buddy movie

In 1870, a gang robs a train and steals a ceremonial Japanese sword meant as a gift for the US President, prompting a manhunt to retrieve it.

Red Sun manages to vacillate between traditional cowboy movies and the far more cynical westerns that would dominate the 1970s. It mixes several genres but is primarily a noteworthy late-era spaghetti western, starring genre stalwart Charles Bronson alongside Toshirō Mifune in one of his last great samurai roles. An important though often overlooked entry in genre cinema, this new 4K restoration on Blu-ray from StudioCanal presents a perfect opportunity to revisit and reappraise a classic western that is typical in many respects, yet unique in others.

After appearing in several westerns in the mid-1950s, Bronson had truly made his mark on the genre as O’Reilly in John Sturges’s The Magnificent Seven (1960), itself a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s The…