Ronin (film)

Ronin
Ronin promotional movie poster
Directed by	John Frankenheimer
Written by	J.D. Zeik (story) David Mamet (screenplay, as Richard Weisz)
Produced by	Frank Mancuso Jr.
Starring	Robert De Niro Jean Reno Natascha McElhone Stellan Skarsgård Sean Bean and Jonathan Pryce
Cinematography	Robert Fraisse
Edited by	Tony Gibbs
Music by	Elia Cmiral
Distributed by	United Artists
Release dates	September 12, 1998 (Venice Film Festival)
Running time	121 min.
Language	English
Budget	US$55,000,000 (estimated)

Ronin is a 1998 action/thriller film written by J.D. Zeik and David Mamet and directed by John Frankenheimer. It stars Robert De Niro and Jean Reno as two of several former special forces and intelligence agents who team up to steal a mysterious, heavily guarded suitcase while navigating a maze of shifting loyalties and alliances. The film is noted for utilizing some of the most sensational car chases on film.

Plot

In a warehouse on the outskirts of Paris, an Irish woman named Deirdre (Natascha McElhone) meets with five men of varying nationalities: Spence (Sean Bean), Larry (Skipp Sudduth), Gregor (Stellan Skarsgård), Vincent (Jean Reno) and Sam (Robert De Niro), all former special forces soldiers or intelligence operatives now working as mercenaries. Deirdre briefs the men on the mission she has hired them for, which is to attack a heavily-armed convoy and steal a case, its contents unknown. Following the briefing, the team begins assembling its gear and weapons. Deirdre meets with her handler Seamus (Jonathan Pryce), who reveals that Russian gangsters are bidding for the case and that the team must act quickly to intercept it. Later at the warehouse, Spence is dismissed from the team, which then departs for Nice, where the ambush is planned. The team pursues the convoy through the countryside and into the city. After a lengthy chase and gun battle, the case is theirs, but Gregor betrays them and steals it. He leaves a fake case that explodes, and Larry is seriously injured.

Gregor attempts to sell the case to the Russians but shoots his contact when double-crossed. Gregor then contacts Mikhi, the leader of the Russian agents, and threatens to sell the case to the Irish unless he is paid a grossly inflated price for it. Mikhi agrees. Meanwhile, the rest of the team tracks Gregor through one of Sam's old CIA contacts and corners him in the Roman arena in Arles. Following a tense standoff and hectic firefight with Gregor and the Russians' hired assassins as well, Gregor escapes the coliseum. But he is taken prisoner by Seamus, who kills Larry and escapes with Deirdre just as Sam and Vincent emerge from the arena.

Sam, seriously wounded from the fight, is taken by Vincent to his friend Jean-Pierre (Michael Lonsdale) in a villa in rural France. After removing the bullet and allowing Sam time to recuperate, Vincent asks Jean-Pierre to help locate Gregor, Dierdre and Seamus. Meanwhile, having returned to Paris, Seamus must wait for the case, which Gregor has mailed the case to himself care of a post office. They are ambushed there by Vincent and Sam.

Following a high-speed chase through the streets and tunnels of Paris, Vincent shoots out Deirdre's tires and sends her car over a highway overpass. The three passengers are pulled from the car by construction workers shortly before it explodes. Gregor once again escapes with the case.

Unsure where to turn next, Vincent and Sam discover that the case is identical to one carried by figure skaters. Intelligence gleaned from Jean-Pierre's contacts also suggest the Russians are involved with figure skater Natacha Kirilova (Katarina Witt), the protégé of Mikhi, who is performing a show at a Paris arena that night.

Vincent and Sam appear at the arena. Mikhi, already there with Natacha, receives a call from Gregor, who demands to meet in a backstage dressing room. Gregor says he has positioned a sniper somewhere in the arena that will shoot Natacha if Gregor is betrayed. Mikhi shoots Gregor regardless, whereupon Natacha is indeed killed.

Mikhi prepares to leave with the case and his money. Vincent and Sam follow the panicked crowd out of the arena in time to see Seamus ambush and shoot Mikhi before stealing the case. Sam finds Deirdre sitting in the getaway car. He tells her to leave, revealing himself as an agent of the CIA whose true objective is to stop Seamus.

Deirdre flees, leaving Seamus to shoot his way past the crowd back into the arena, with Sam in pursuit. In the final gunfight, Seamus wounds Sam and prepares to kill him when Vincent opens fire from the scaffolding, killing Seamus.

Days later, in a Parisian cafe, over radio broadcasts revealing a peace agreement reached between the Irish organization Sinn Féin and the British as a result of Seamus's death, Sam and Vincent part as friends. "What was in the case?" Vincent asks. Sam can't (or won't) say. He drives off with his CIA contact, as Vincent disappears into Paris alone.

Cast

• Robert De Niro - Sam
• Jean Reno - Vincent
• Natascha McElhone - Deirdre
• Stellan Skarsgård - Gregor
• Sean Bean - Spence
• Skipp Sudduth - Larry
• Michael Lonsdale - Jean-Pierre
• Jan Triska - Dapper Gent
• Jonathan Pryce - Seamus O'Roarke
• Féodor Atkine - Mikhi
• Katarina Witt - Natacha Kirilova
• Bernard Bloch - Sergi

Production

Writer David Mamet is credited as "Richard Weisz", reportedly due to disappointment at having to share credit with Zeik (the originating writer). According to production sources (notably Zeik's lawyer), Mamet's contributions were "minor", limited to adding the character Deirdre and most of De Niro's scenes. According to Frankenheimer, "The credits should read: Story by J.D. Zeik, screenplay by David Mamet. We didn't shoot a line of Zeik's script." This is confirmed by a copy of Zeik's original script, which shows his very minor contributions.

The title is derived from the Japanese term ronin, used for samurai who have no master and whose motivations are largely based on money and survival instead of honor and duty. Many of the characters in the film are unemployed agents set adrift by the end of the Cold War. The film also makes a lengthy reference to the classic Japanese story, the 47 Ronin, further alluding to the identities of the protagonists and antagonists of the film.

Ronin is notable for a number of car chase scenes, the last being a particularly lengthy one through the streets and tunnels of Paris; some scenes utilized up to 150 stunt drivers. Car work has been a speciality of Frankenheimer, a former amateur racing driver , ever since his 1966 film, Grand Prix. Although action sequences are often shot by a second unit director, Frankenheimer did all these himself. While he was aware of the many innovations in digital special effects since then, he elected to film all these sequences live, to obtain the maximum level of authenticity. To further this, many of the high-speed shots have the actual actors in the cars. Skipp Sudduth did nearly all of his own driving, while other cars were right hand drive models with stunt drivers driving - crashes were handled by a stuntman. The chases are also notable for their lack of musical score accompaniment, unusual in modern films.

The contents of the metal case are never revealed (see MacGuffin). Mamet has written that he believes revealing such details can be anticlimactic, that a director is wiser to allow the audience's imagination to answer the question. This is a technique Mamet has used repeatedly in his films.

Porn star Ron Jeremy had a small role playing a fishmonger in Paris whose stall is demolished during the chase, but his scene was cut by the studio when audiences laughed as he was recognized. He is credited as "Ron Hiatt", which is similar to his surname by birth, "Hyatt".

There has been speculation that a sequel was to be filmed in Asia, with De Niro and Reno reprising their original roles alongside actors James Franco, Charlotte Rampling and Tony Leung Chiu-Wai . Sean Bean is also reportedly being sought to reprise his character Spence, this time as a bad guy, working as an MI6 mole. But as of 2008, the Independent Movie Data Base includes no such film as being in pre-production for actors De Niro, Reno or Bean.

DVD & Blu-ray Disc Release

File:Ronin Blu Ray Cover.jpg

Blu-ray cover for Ronin

The DVD release has an extensive, detailed commentary about the making of the film by Frankenheimer, where he explains the production techniques used to realize the high speed chases.

The DVD's paper insert includes excerpts from a Frankenheimer interview in which he discusses the chase through a Paris tunnel that is remarkably similar to the site of Princess Dianas death on 31 August 1997. The filming took place in a different tunnel, however. "Paris has a lot of tunnels," Frankenheimer commented. "That’s part of the thing about the city I wanted people to see. A crash in a tunnel in Paris is about as likely as someone having a crash on a freeway here. It happens all the time." (Rocky Mountain News, September 27, 1998).

The US edition of the original DVD release has several navigational hooks to DVD-ROM content, which were taken advantage of several weeks after the original release of the DVD, on MGM's website during a special 'RONIN' event where viewers would be taken on a guided tour of the making of RONIN. Making-of scenes shot during filming are hidden on the DVD, since they are not present on the main menu of the DVD you can only access them on a computer using the DVD-ROM program that is on the disc or using a DVD viewing program that let you navigate through the titles of the disc manually.

An alternate ending on the DVD depicts Deirdre being ambushed and carried off in a van.

On Oct 11, 2004 a two-disc Special Edition of the movie was released in the US. This new version contain the same things as the old single disc version on disc one and on disc two there are supplemental material about the movie: one documentary, six featurettes and a picture gallery. A Blu-ray Disc edition was announced but then subsequently postponed by MGM.

External links

• Ronin at IMDb
• Ronin at Rotten Tomatoes
• Ronin at Metacritic