Review: Ronin

Here are the stars of the new John Frankenheimer film Ronin: Jean-Claude Lagniez, Patrick Ronchin, Michel Neugarten, Jean-Pierre Jarrier, Gilbert Bataille, Sebastian Seveau, Cyrille Dufaut, and Guy Chasseuil. Never heard of them? Lagniez is the Car Stunt Coordinator, Ronchin the Car Stunt Technical Coordinator, the rest are stunt drivers. Remember their names for they are the reason Ronin even exists.

How can one even begin to describe the spectacular car chases featured in Ronin? Imagine, if you will, a car driving down a road so narrow that only one car can fit on it. Imagine that the road winds and curves. Now imagine that road being home to a chase with cars racing at breakneck speed. When a car chase is on, Ronin pulsates and thrills. The complex stunt sequences were executed without the benefit of digital compositing. Those stunts are real and they strike one as such.

Unfortunately, Frankenheimer wraps a story around it. Ronin, as the film's prelude explicates, are samurai warriors who failed to protect their masters and are now forced to roam the land, looking for work as hired swords. Five contemporary samurai are presented in Ronin: Sam (Robert De Niro), a former CIA operative; Vincent (Jean Reno), a French coordinator; Gregor (Stellan Skarsgaard), the electronics specialist; Spence (Sean Bean), the English weapons specialist; and Larry (Skipp Sudduth), an American driver. They are gathered together by a dour Irish lass named Deirdre (Natascha McElhone). Their mission: to recover a steel box from men who don't want to relinquish it. Their method: to ambush two to three cars carrying five to eight men, all unpleasant and all highly trained to safeguard the case. Their payoff: $5,000 each week for a minimum of four weeks with a $20,000 bonus upon completion. No one knows what's in the case, no one knows who they're working for.

The film tries to inject some interest in these characters but, quite frankly, they aren't very intriguing. We know as much as the characters do. The case turns out to be a McGuffin; we never know what's in the case. So why bother caring about the characters? Why bother being with them during countless and interminable stakeouts when they barely conduct a conversation? Even when they do exchange words, it's the same topics: Who's our employer? What's in the case? Why are you doing the job? Blah, blah, blah. Just get to the action.

The life of a modern day samurai was never more astutely depicted in Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Samouraï. The film's star, Alain Delon, captured the inherent loneliness of that life. A samurai is not meant to have a partner, professionally or personally, for no one can be trusted. For a time in Ronin, double and triple crosses intersect with alarming alacrity. That suited me just fine. No one is what they seem but the twists don't impact as strongly as they should. There are too many characters who are cut from the same cloth. If Frankenheimer had streamlined the characters, the betrayals would have been more powerful.

Still, the actors are uniformly excellent with special kudos to Skarsgaard, Reno and DeNiro. Watch Skarsgaard during the film's lengthiest and nerviest chase: he's as unbelievably calm as Grace Kelly was nonchalant in her famous drive with Cary Grant in Alfred Hitchcock's To Catch a Thief. Yet, after they've driven past all sorts of obstacles and winding roads, he finally decides to put his seat belt on. It's an absurdly comic touch in the midst of all the adrenaline.

Reno and De Niro interact well. Their characters' relationship is one of the more interesting elements in the film. Take a sequence in which a shot Sam guides Vincent through the extrication. After Vincent pokes around and finally takes the bullet out, Sam tells him he can stitch up the wound by himself for "I'll be passing out now." De Niro is wonderful. Looking fit and sleek, he's forceful and to the point. He doesn't jerk the audience around the way Ronin does.

Ronin

Directed by: John Frankenheimer

Written by: J.D. Zeik, David Mamet (as Richard Weisz)

Starring: Robert De Niro, Jean Reno, Natascha McElhone, Stellan Skarsgaard, Sean Bean, Skipp Sudduth, Jonathan Pryce, Michael Lonsdale