starring Charles Bronson, Toshirō Mifune, Alain Delon, Ursula Andress
directed by Terence Young
114 minutes
Link (Charles Bronson) and Gauche (Alain Delon) rob a train together. The Japanese ambassador to the United States is aboard the train. Gauche kills one of the ambassador's bodyguards and takes a sword that was intended as a gift for the President of the United States. Gauche double crosses Link and mistakenly thinks that he has killed him.
Link teams up with Kuroda (Toshirō Mifune), the Japanese ambassador's other bodyguard, to try and find Gauche and recover the sword and gold that Link believes is his rightful share of the train robbery. Link tries more than once to lose Kuroda. Link and Kuroda locate Cristina (Ursula Andress) Gauche's girlfriend and try using her as bait to lure Gauche into a trap.
Cristina escapes from Link and Kuroda only to be captured by Commanches. They rescue her from the Commanches but more Commanches show up just after Gauche finds them.
Thoughts
This Western was produced by a combination of French and Italian production companies. It was filmed in Spain. The director is British. It was released in France, Italy, and Spain in 1971 but it wasn't released in the United States until 1972.
Terence Young also directed three James Bond films, all of which starred Sean Connery: Dr. No (1962), From Russia with Love (1963), and Thunderball (1965).
Most of this film was in English. There was some dialogue in other languages (Spanish, Japanese) but none of it was subtitled.
I'm not that crazy about this film. I think that a lot of it comes down to the writing and the way Charles Bronson plays Link. It was just a little too tongue in cheek and I didn't care for the fact that Toshirō Mifune quite often was little more than the punchline for Bronson's jokes.
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