RONIN (1998) ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
D: John Frankenheimer
Robert De Niro, Jean Reno, Stellan Skarsgård,
Michael Lonsdale, Natascha McElhone, Sean Bean,
Jonathan Pryce, Skipp Sudduth, Katarina Witt
This foot-to-the-floor action movie is essentially a series of high-speed car chases stuck to a story about a gang of free-lance mercenaries trying to track down a suitcase that has something in it that somebody wants very badly and will pay a lot of money to get. That you don't know what's in the suitcase is irrelevant, along with just about everything else except for fast cars that go lickety-split all over Paris and Nice. The script's tricky enough to get by, the cast knows just what to do with it, and Frankenheimer keeps things humming along, even when the actors (and their Formula One stunt drivers) step out from behind the wheel. For analog car-chase fans, this ranks right up there with "The French Connection" and "Bullitt". David Mamet co-wrote the screenplay under the pen name Richard Weisz.
Michael Lonsdale
(1931-2020)
