Ronin

I picked up this DVD in Asda's a few weeks ago and seeing it had Robert De Niro starring convinced me enough to buy it. Then seeing in the credits it starred Jean Reno, Sean Bean and Jonothan Pryce too made me realise I was watching a winner here.

I wasn't wrong either, this film is brilliant. The beginning is slow and tense; dark, clear colours in the picture sets the mood perfectly. From then on most of it is pretty much action.

Five mysterious men of various backgrounds (ex-CIA, KGB etc) meet in Paris, France for a job headed by a Northern Irish woman. The job is to steal a case from a group and return the case to their as yet unknown employers. Just as things seem to run smoothly, one of them is a double-crosser.

Now for some of the best bits, the car chases. These are shot magnificently as Peugeot's, BMW's and Audi's tear through the streets of Paris. These chases are the most thrilling chases I have ever seen. And when you get chases, you get crashes. Think on-coming traffic chases and you might get the picture.

This is a must see film. 8 out of 10.

Now THIS is what I call an action movie. Combine a brilliant cast (Robert De Niro + the underrated Jean Reno, Sean Bean amongst them) with brilliant action scenes - gun fights and car chases are both top notch here; in fact, they're some of the best that have been put on film ever, and stand the rest of time really well (watching in 2022g - with lots of exotic European locals, like Paris and Nice, and a touch of swirling intrigue thrown in for good measure and you have a really great film.

De Niro plays a no-nonsense American mercenary hired by someone shadowy to retrieve a case. He doesn't know much more than that, except the folks currently in control of it are willing to kill to keep it in their possession. Lots of sketchy actors on both sides, including Russians and Irish!

Ronin is defined as a Japanese Samurai who has lost his master and must search for work as a sword for hire or reduced to banditry. A group of experts are gathered in Paris by Deirdre (Natascha McElhone) who is looking to steal a mysterious suitcase. The group (Robert DeNiro, Jean Reno, Stellan Skarsgård, Sean Bean, Skipp Sudduth) don't know each other and don't trust each other. The plan is very sketchy, and Deirdre won't tell them what's in the suitcase.

Director John Frankenheimer shows that he still has a bit of juice left in him. The best thing about this movie is the class of acting talents he is able to get. Robert DeNiro is superbly brilliant. Jean Reno is absolutely solid, and Sean Bean puts in a nice turn. The objective is almost unimportant. This is about a bunch of great actors playing around with some mysterious characters. Each of whom may turn out to be something less than reliable.

Suffused with a sense of twilight melancholy and pre-millennial nostalgia, John Frankenheimer's end-of-career genre masterwork Ronin is an unapologetic old-fashioned caper playing as the perfect reaction to a formally ubiquitous genre, the Cold War-era espionage Euro-thriller. The film savours a haunting final gasp just prior to being downsized by 21st-century Bourne-driven techno-overload and an onslaught of bloodless PG-13 CGI spectacles. It shows the talent of Frankenheimer that he manages to take what is essentially a rather one-note often contrived story and turn it into something truly special, approaching the material with seriousness, commitment and professionalism. Lean, sleek, spare, almost minimalist; it's like watching the revival of a forgotten art form. The fact that it's done with a minimum of special effects makes it all the more stirring, a tribute to the film's earnestness that we can overlook most of its absurdities and simply revel in its deeds. Elevated by its talent in front and behind the camera, the winning combination of Robert De Niro and Jean Reno imbues the film with a likeable brothers-in-arms chemistry that sees the duo at the peak of their prowess; while Robert Fraisse's photography and Elia Cmiral's score construct a believable and lived-in atmosphere of hyperrealism. Carried by a style that's fast, furious and impeccably paced, at the time of release, Ronin might have seemed like an efficient vehicle, nowadays it's more akin to a classic car, one with exceptional class you won't find in most automobiles today.

A pretty decent action outing for Robert De Niro and John Frankenheimer. Good photography of some of the seedier neighborhoods of Paris and other French cities. This film is quintessential De Niro, and he gets all the good lines. There is an interesting revelation at the end, which I will not reveal here. The case everyone is after, is a complete McGuffin, what Hitchcock called that plot device, the thing which everyone wants, and it doesn't really matter exactly what that is. I think that Frankenheimer may have been paying homage to Hitchcock on this, as what is in the case is never revealed. Apparently David Mamet was the script doctor on this film, and it ended up OK. I am of two minds on Mamet, having liked "The Untouchables" a lot, and disliked "Glengarry Glen Ross" and loathed "Oleanna". I also liked Natascha McElhone, who I had never heard of. She is a beautiful and accomplished actress. Some people complained about her brogue. OK, she's not Meryl Streep. But then again, who is? A lot of actors won't even try. I look forward to seeing more of her.

Oh, yeah, and some of the car chases were really, really cool, almost McQueenian.