1998 Directed by John Frankenheimer
A briefcase with undisclosed contents – sought by Irish terrorists and the Russian mob – makes its way into criminals' hands. An Irish liaison assembles a squad of mercenaries, or 'ronin', and gives them the thorny task of recovering the case.
Robert De Niro Jean Reno Natascha McElhone Stellan Skarsgård Skipp Sudduth Jonathan Pryce Sean Bean Michael Lonsdale Féodor Atkine Katarina Witt Ron Perkins Daniel Breton Amidou Jan Tříska Bernard Bloch Léopoldine Serre Dominic Gugliametti Alan Beckworth Tolsty Gérard Moulévrier Lionel Vitrant Vincent Schmitt Julia Maraval Laurent Spielvogel Steve Suissa Katia Tchenko Dyna Gauzy Lilly-Fleur Pointeaux Dimitri Rafalsky Show All…
Cyril Raffaelli Marc Hoang Joe Dunne Jean-Louis Airola Catherine Robert Jean-Pierre Jarier Gilbert Bataille Alexandrine Roux Stéphane Margot
로닌, Ронин, 冷血悍將, 罗宁, ローニン, โรนิน 5 มหากาฬล่าพลิกนรก
Mamet and Frankenheimer possessed by Melville is basically crack to a film-nerd sociopath in love with genre hyperspecificity like me.
to those who have not been exposed to the high points of the genre (and to be clear, the said high points are high), action is generally regarded as an unsophisticated genre that is artistically bankrupt. this stereotype is a result of the ratio of how many bad action movies come out a year (many) compared to how many good action movies come out a year (few). this preconceived notion that action films are inherently bad makes it so that some are unable to realize that, when it’s good, action is fucking good.
ronin is a prime example films that exhibit the true artistry of action filmmaking. for instance, look at the figure skating scene. any given action filmmaking hack…
This thing is suave as fuck. Specialized strangers are hired to do a job, shit hits the fan and things get real messy and untrustworthy. There's plotting, scheming, backstabbing, vagueness, ulterior motives, snappy dialogue and an abundance of awesome car chases. Ronin is one hell of a good time and it totally delivers!
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glad to have made this my first experience at the new beverly: a lot of b-side leftovers from heat (warrior codes among world-weary professional criminals) and mission impossible (the cutthroat economy of plans-within-plans espionage) but punched up by an entire weightclass by the god frankeheimer channelling some gritty, blunt american thrills and destruction and some prime mamet tough guy dialogue; he ambushed mr. raspberry jam with coffee! legit 80s levels of civilian collateral damage, loud squib-heavy shootouts, a cartoonish number of double-crosses and some of the sickest driving ever done on the streets of france. the setpieces are so fast, chaotic and dangerous-looking they completely earn the friedkin comparisons.
[35mm]
It's just so simple, assemble a crew, get a briefcase, tentions run high, can't trust this one, can't trust that one, bang, bang, car chase, boom!
You gotta love it, I did, and I still do after all this time.
Brilliant cast, I mean, you got Reno, De Niro, Jonathan Pryce, Natascha McElhone, Sean Bean and Stellan Skarsgard...what more do you want?
It's straight to the point here. No fancy special effects or color corrections, just good choreography and stuntwork.
I've said it back then, and I'll say it again, "Ronin" has the best car chases, period.
it really amazes me how much my taste has changed since i first saw this back in 2018: at that point, i considered this a competently-made but boring thriller, nothing that special. now, after wading through the filmographies of michael mann, walter hill, johnnie to and jean-pierre melville, ronin's specific quality of extremely tactical and legible action, terse and measured hardboiled dialogue by david mamet, and stacked cast of excellent 90s performers are things that i can now fully appreciate and respect.
ronin focuses on my highest cinephilic obsession, men who live by a code, not a moral code, but a code of action, a code of presentation, a stripped-down bare-bones way of life, a way of encountering with a…
(The Average Joe’s Movie Club Cast)
Get ready for plenty of Deniro, Reno, backstabbing, and some badass car chases!
"Either you're part of the problem or you're part of the solution or you're just part of the landscape."
This film has a slick opening that explains how ronin back in feudal Japan were basically free agent samurai. But honestly other than a few elements that loosely tie into that title, this great action movie that reminded me of the Bourne franchise could have been named anything. Those tie-ins include how a Mission Impossible like team of free agents are hired to obtain a supposedly extremely valuable briefcase. Then later on, there is a safe house owned by a samurai model…
this is one of the most immaculately crafted action/espionage films I’ve ever seen, perfectly calibrated in terms of suspense, editing, narrative and action. each car chase, betrayal and switch of the case is handled with excellence, with bullets and fire raining down upon everything. it has some of the most valuable editing I’ve seen in any action movie, with the figure skating sequence in particular being some of the most visceral cutting I can think of. it’s a movie about action beyond character, about the need for systems to keep maintaining themselves, people devoting themselves to lives of pain, process and punishment for the sake of a case with irrelevant contents. each person in the movie is either designed to…
A film I've had on my horizon for a good while, and now couldn't be a better time with the release of Arrow's superb-looking Blu-ray edition. John Frankenheimer's Ronin proves itself as a slickly made and gritty spy-thriller, that feels like a precursor to the more realistic and narrative-driven action films that would follow (notably the Bourne series).
Robert De Niro features here as a supposed ex-CIA agent named Sam who gets employed by IRA personnel Deirdre along with various other ex-operatives (or 'Ronin' or what have you), to carry out what initially seems like a pretty basic mission, to retrieve a mysterious silver briefcase that the Russian Mob have put a bid over. He finds himself paired with French…
