Two Cents is an original column akin to a book club for films. The Cinapse team will program films and contribute our best, most insightful, or most creative thoughts on each film using a maximum of 200 words each. Guest writers and fan comments are encouraged, as are suggestions for future entries to the column. Join us as we share our two cents on films we love, films we are curious about, and films we believe merit some discussion.
The Pick
“You worried about saving your own skin?”
“Yeah, I am. It covers my body.”
The high concept that lends Ronin its title and muted, melancholy feel is this: In the wake of the Cold War’s end, an infrastructure of spies and espionage agents who had dedicated their entire lives to specific missions of subterfuge and cold-blooded power plays suddenly found themselves adrift, disavowed by their countries and out of place in the new world. They became a new form of ronin, like master-less samurai adrift in feudal Japan.
Our entry point into this world is Sam (Robert De Niro), a former CIA operative now working as a gun-for-hire for whatever shady figures crawl out of the woodwork with cash enough to make it worth his while. This particular bit of bad news is Deirdre (Natascha McElhone) an Irish operative who hires Sam to join a team seeking to obtain a mysterious case. What’s in the case? She won’t say. Who does she work for? She won’t say.
Joining Sam are French gunman Vincent (Jean Reno), motormouth braggart Spence (Sean Bean), and taciturn tech genius Gregor (Stellan Skarsgard). While Jonathan Pryce’s Seamus and a host of other interested parties skulk around the edges of the story, the team prepares for their heist.
This being a movie, things do not go as smoothly as planned and soon the characters are plunged into a tangled, deadly game in pursuit of the case and whatever answers it might hold.
Directed by Two Cents alum John Frankenheimer (The Train), Ronin was a bounce-back vehicle for the legendary director following the nightmarish production and disastrous reception of The Island of Dr. Moreau. The one where Marlon Brando wears an ice bucket on his head, yes, that one. Frankheimer would complete only one more film before his passing, the flop Reindeer Games, making Ronin the last masterpiece in an acclaimed career.
Ronin is most famous for its epic car chases, including a lengthy one that climaxes with heroes and villains pursuing each other while booking it down the wrong way on the freeway. But the film was also praised for its highly-quotable screenplay, rewritten almost completely by David Mamet, writing under a pseudonym.
“So what could have been conducted in a collegial atmosphere is now fucked into a cocked hat.”
The film was well-received upon release and still maintains a healthy following, in large part because of those car chases and that Mamet dialogue. So join us as we saddle up with this band of desperate, possibly doomed desperadoes and try to make some sense of Ronin. — Brendan
Next Week’s Pick:
Brand new on Netflix, The Perfection has received acclaim from numerous critics and sites (including Cinapse), always praising it as a wild ride and urging the audience to go in as blind as possible. So… yeah, I don’t know anything else about it. Let’s watch! — Austin
Would you like to be a guest in next week’s Two Cents column? Simply watch and send your under-200-word review to twocents(at)cinapse.co anytime before midnight on Thursday!
Our Guests
Ryan Bisasky:
Ronin is a hell of a movie, and it contains one of cinema’s best car chases (the second one). Even though it doesn’t feel that long ago, this was kind of pre-using CG to enhance car chases and gunplay which added to the grit. There’s not a weak performance and it’s one of the rare films to feature Sean Bean where his character doesn’t die! Also a shout-out to the cinematography, which has a cool icy look, which was not changed for the Arrow Blu-ray. And the sound mix certainly gave my speaker system a workout. Ronin is a film I highly recommend, and also something to crank the volume on. (@TheChewDefense)
Brendan Agnew (The Norman Nerd):
“They could have fought for themselves, but they chose honor. They chose myth.”
“They chose wrong.”
Lot of that going around in this movie.
Given how good with words David Mamet is, it’s impressive how heavy the silence hangs over Ronin. So much of what makes this a great movie — arguably one of *the* Great Spy Movies — is how it allows characters to exist silently in this world without questions and answers. So many of the decisions these masterless agents make are wrong: trusting the wrong people, following the wrong people, waiting for the wrong people. It underlines exactly how right all the choices by director John Frankenheimer are.
Because not only does he deliver one of the Mount Rushmore of cinematic car chases, but the rest of the film is a well oiled machine, its springs wound just tight enough that you can feel the tension until the next shootout or betrayal or harried escape. Robert De Niro outta predictably great, but in a studiously relaxed way that makes ample room for a wealth of character actors (including THREE Bond Villains!) and a bromance for the ages with Jean Reno.
Look, if you haven’t seen it, you know it’s worth it for the car chase(s) alone — and it is, but also for all the other stuff.
If you’ve already seen it? You chose right. (@BLCAgnew)
The Team
Ronin hit theaters in my late teens and became a go-to favorite of my college days. Slick, modern car chases, an old school crime vibe, and a vaguely Japanese patina to an otherwise European-flavored thriller, all combined with a cast to die for, made this a beloved crime film. Over the years, however, my estimation of the film seems to have cooled. An opportunity to cover and revisit the film upon the arrival of Arrow’s Blu-ray release felt more like a nostalgic opportunity to delve into an old favorite I hadn’t hung out with in a while. I wasn’t prepared to be absolutely blown away by the storytelling, style, character work, and quiet cool that Ronin truly represents. This isn’t just a solid late ’90s spy thriller, it’s a true entry in the espionage annals.
It’s also an absolute masterclass of tension. Ronin was the film that put director John Frankenheimer on my radar. I still haven’t seen every last one of his films, but he’s got a handful of great films to his name, with early career achievements like The Manchurian Candidate, Seconds, and Birdman of Alcatraz. A couple of mid-career standouts include The French Connection II and Black Sunday. Then you’ve got Ronin, an example of a late career home run on par with George Miller’s roaring return to the Mad Max franchise with Fury Road. Ronin is famous for its car chases, and they feel like they’re crafted with the ferocious speed of a filmmaker half Frankenheimer’s age. But the speed and ferocity belie a mature filmmaker utilizing restraint even amidst the chase. Ronin is cool and collected; portraying professionals doing what they’re the best in the world at, with all the fat removed.
Read the rest of Ed’s thoughts HERE. (@Ed_Travis)
I can’t pretend that I completely understand the overly complex plot of Ronin, but it sure does have fantastic shootouts and awesome car chases. I mean, with scenes that cool, the convoluted choices made by the filmmakers about the minute details of this action thriller don’t really matter, do they?
De Niro is fantastic, McElhone owns every scene she’s in, and the rest of the cast more than does their part to make this one of the better films of its type in the modern era. It’s been on my list for a couple years, notably since its Arrow release in Summer 2017. Its inclusion on Two Cents gave me the push I needed to finally dive in… and I’m thankful for it. (@thepaintedman)
The car chase is obviously, correctly, the thing that people always remember and bring up whenever conversations turn towards Ronin, but I’d like to focus on another bit from near the end of the movie. It’s a long, quiet scene in which Stellan Skarsgard’s rogue agent attempts to bully his way out of a confrontation with another crooked party by threatening the life of someone he believes this person loves. As he counts down to the moment when his associate, if not contacted, will take the lethal shot, the other man shows no reaction. And as Skarsgard gets closer and closer to zero, you see him realize that he bet wrong, that he, the coldest and most ruthless member of an ensemble stacked with the coldest and most ruthless motherfuckers imaginable, has at last found someone even harder than himself.
Ronin belongs to my favorite subsection of spy movie, the kind where everyone involved understand that espionage is a sucker’s game that destroys your life and soul and leaves you next to nothing to show for it. The characters in this film inhabit a world populated with carnivores, and only those most dead-set on their own survival are going to be able to eke out a victory. Mamet’s icy machismo has always been best-suited to stories about men breaking each other down for sport, and the hidden world of spycraft is the perfect fodder for for him (see also his underrated, nihilistic treasure, Spartan).
Ronin suffers only in that that car chase everyone loves is such an unbelievable sequence of action perfection, it can’t help but feel like a come-down that the movie keeps going for another half hour or so. Frankenheimer originally had the perfect sick, jet-black punchline to end the film on a wallop that would’ve more than justified this extra time, but test audiences hated it, leaving Ronin feeling just the tiniest bit slack in its finale. But no matter. This is one of the great American action movies of the 90s, maybe ever, a high-water mark that’s only recently been approached by the John Wicks of the world. (@theTrueBrendanF)
The first time I watched Ronin I appreciated the car chases and loved the cast, but found the overall film kind of a bore. The first half hour or so is admittedly still a bit of a slog, but I was more on the film’s wavelength this time. The action looks and feels completely real, and it’s amazing that they managed to capture this amount of danger on the screen.
The creators of the Burnout series (in my opinion the pinnacle of driving and racing games) clearly took huge influence from Ronin’s car chases, incorporating driving in the wrong lane as a major component of gameplay, and even building levels with tunnel sequences very much like the one seen in the film.
John Frankenheimer had a long and varied career with thrilling successes (the lesser known The Train being a Two Cents favorite) and high-profile duds. His Marseille-set The French Connection II was an abysmal follow-up to Friedkin’s original, and a thought struck me on this second watch of the film: this is a course correction, a France-set crime film full of hard-boiled action, big twists, and huge 70s-style car chases. (@VforVashaw)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TqaVEIUw4U
Next week’s pick:
