Amazon.com Essentials:
Robert De Niro stars as an American intelligence operative adrift in
irrelevance since the end of the Cold War--much like a masterless samurai,
a.k.a. "ronin." With his services for sale, he joins a renegade,
international
team of fellow covert warriors with nothing but time on their hands. Their
mission, as defined by the woman who hires them (Natascha McElhone), is to
get
hold of a particular suitcase that is equally coveted by the Russian mafia
and Irish terrorists. As the scheme gets underway, De Niro's lone wolf
strikes
up a rare friendship with his French counterpart (Jean Reno), gets into a
more-or-less romantic frame of mind with McElhone, and asserts
his
experience on the planning and execution of the job--going so far as to
publicly humiliate one team member (Sean Bean) who is clearly out of his
league. The story is largely unremarkable--there's an obligatory twist
midway through that changes the nature of the team's business--but
legendary
filmmaker John Frankenheimer (Seconds, The Manchurian
Candidate) leaps at
the material, bringing to it an honest tension and seasoned, breathtaking
skill with precision-action direction. The centerpiece of the movie is an
honest-to-God car chase that is the real thing: not the
how-can-we-top-the-last-stunt cartoon nonsense of Richard Donner (Lethal
Weapon), but a
pulse-quickening, kinetic dance of superb montage and timing. In a sense,
Ronin is
almost Frankenheimer's self-quoting version of a John Frankenheimer film.
There isn't anything here he hasn't done before, but it's sure great to see
it
all again. --Tom Keogh
