Midway (1976)

Several months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States launched an attack on Japan.  The bombing did minimal damage, but demonstrated that the homeland was not safe from American reprisals.  As such, Admiral Yamamoto (Toshiro Mfune) was allowed to proceed with a daring attack.  With a vast fleet that included 4 aircraft carriers, he set out for Midway Island.

In Hawaii, Captain Matt Garth (Charlton Heston) confronted intelligence specialist Commander Joe Rochefort.  Joe suspected the Japs were up to something.  Even though he could only decipher 10% of the communiques, he had a hunch that they were moving on Midway.  False report about a water filtration system confirmed it.  Or was this an elaborate ruse by the Japs.  Admiral Nimitz (Henry Fonda) trusted Rochefort's hunch and dispatched the remaining carriers - Enterprise, Hornet, and Yorktown - to Midway.  Now that the battle map is setup and the players have been introduced, it was time to detail the events.

After some melodrama between Garth, his aviator son (Edward Albert), and his Japanese finance (Christina Kokubo), the movie becomes a dramatized documentary on the battle.  Each fleet sending scout planes to locate the other, bombers unescorted by fighters are wiped from the sky, unprotected carriers are sunk, and Midway Island is bombed.  Thought Garth is the main character, the story is not told from his perspective.  There is Admiral Spruance (Glenn Ford) commanding Task Force 16 (which comprised Enterprise & Hornet), a command he received on account of Admiral Halsey (Robert Mitchum) suffering from shingles.  Admiral Fletcher (Robert Webber) commands Task Force 17, which only had one carrier, the Yorktown.  The Yorktown had been seriously damaged at the Battle of Coral Sea and really should have been in port for repairs, but desperate times call for desperate measures.  Of course, there is Admiral Nimitz in Hawaii who gets regular reports on how things are going.

There are entirely too many characters.  The number of noteworthy stars is impressive.  James Coburn gets a cameo as a naysayer to Nimitz's strategy.  Robert Wagner is Admiral Nimitz's chief of staff.  Tom Selleck is an unnamed officer on Midway.  Dabney Coleman is an officer on one of the carriers.  Cliff Robertson, Monte Markham, Christopher George, Steve Kanaly, and Erik Estrada are pilots.  Pat Morita - best remembered as Mr. Miagi - plays a Japanese admiral.

Just okay.  A good thumbnail sketch of the Battle of Midway, the battle that turned the Pacific War in the United States' favor.

Red Sun (1971)

In 1870, Link Stuart (Charles Bronson) and Gauche (Alain Delon) executed a train robbery.  As it happened, the train was also transporting the Japanese ambassador and his retainers.  Gauche robbed the Japanese as well, including a katana that was to be a gift for President US Grant.  At this point, Gauche betrayed Link, leaving him for dead at the train.  The ambassador dispatched a samurai, Kuroda Jubei (Toshiro Mifune), to recover the sword in 7 days.  Link was forced to be his guide.  Of course, Link was quite eager to find Gauche and the fortune in gold they had stolen.  Along the way, East and West butt heads frequently, but also back one another up in their shared quest.

There are many challenges along the way.  There are bands of Gauche's gang members terrorizing the random farmer, Comanche raiding throughout the region, and Link's constant efforts to either ditch Kuroda or convince the samurai not to immediately kill Gauche when they find him.  Yes, those last two represent a lot of the interaction between Link and Kuroda.

Filmed in Spain with a cast that feels like a typical Spaghetti Western, it is a notch above that usual fare.  Alain Delon is excellent as the villain.  He isn't the usual rough and tumble gunman or the mustachioed colonel with a legion of goons.  He's a New Orleans dandy, a rarity among Westerns and unheard of in Spaghetti Westerns.  At one point, he killed several of his men, which is so typical as to be a bad cliche.  However, when a later incident looked like it would lead to killing another of his men, he desisted.  Why the change?  The ones he killed knew where the treasure was buried.  Ah, he's a canny one who doesn't kill his own men to prove to the audience that he is truly villainous.

Christina (Ursula Andress) is a prostitute and also Gauche's favorite girl.  Link made use of that knowledge, getting to her before Gauche did.  She is not some wilting flower.  She is a fighter and that doesn't always benefit her.  She is eager to leave the life she has but she does not want to betray Gauche.  Will her loyalty pay off?

Toshiro Mifune's samurai is easy to understand.  He must recover the sword and avenge the retainer that Gauche murdered.  His task is just and his opponent is an unrepentant criminal and killer.  He is a classic hero though also a fish out of water story, as he is in world that operates unlike Japan.  By contrast, Charles Bronson's outlaw is hard to explain.  He is introduced as just another criminal, but has the misfortune of getting caught by the Japanese.  One would think that he could have ditched the samurai.  The growing mutual respect between the two was great, but diverged from Link's introductory narrative.  He's a changed man by the end of the movie though it is unclear why.

The setting is a bit off.  There was no railroad route through Santa Fe in 1870.  If the ambassador was traveling by rail, he would have gone from San Francisco to Salt Lake City to Omaha to Chicago to Washington.  However, that path would have had very few Spanish-speakers and no Comanches.  Many of the guns are incorrect but I only realized that after reading the trivia on IMDb.

Good popcorn fun.  Recommended.