RONIN
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Capsule: A good director, a great lineup of
stars, lots of action, explosions, car chases,
crashing cars, and flames. But RONIN also has
almost no story beyond double crosses and murders.
This is a film with minimal characterization. John
Frankenheimer gives us a film that is all sizzle
and no steak. Rating: 4 (0 to 10), 0 (-4 to +4)
It would be hard to choose the best American political thriller. Some people would probably pick THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE and others (myself included) would pick SEVEN DAYS IN MAY. Both those films were tense exercises in chills. The two films came out within two years of each other and both were directed by the same man, John Frankenheimer. But that was 1962 and 1964 respectively. For most of the rest of his career Frankenheimer has turned out some decent films, but has shown little of the promise that those two thrillers showed. Each of those films had memorable characters and a tense plot. They had almost nothing in the way of chases or gunplay. The thrills all came from the plot. RONIN is like a film made by another man. Somewhere behind all the shooting and explosions and car chases there are the rudiments ofa plot, but we see only tiny pieces of it. We get a clue here and one there as to what is going on but J. D. Zeik's screenplay is a bit obscure.
The film begins explaining that a ronin is a masterless samurai. When a samurai has failed in the job of protecting his master from death, he becomes a ronin, much like a gunfighter in the American West. If you miss the opening, do not worry. This film will explain again what a ronin is. Sam (played by Robert De Niro) is the modern equivalent of a ronin. He is a free agent who seems to have really good instincts about how to stay alive the world of a professional killer. He clearly was in a dangerous business at one time and now he seems to be drifting around on his own somewhere in France. Sam is recruited from a Montmartre bar by Dierdre (Natascha McElhone of THE TRUMAN SHOW), an Irish woman, to be part of an action to steal a mysterious metal case. Dierdre is very tight-lipped about what is in the case. Sam joins a team of four others: Vincent (Jean Reno of THE PROFESSIONAL/LEON and MISSION IMPOSSIBLE), Spence (Sean Bean, TV's Richard Sharpe, and also PATRIOT GAMES and GOLDENEYE), and Gregor (Stellan Skarsgard of BREAKING THE WAVES and GOOD WILL HUNTING). Also along is Larry (Skipp Suddeth). The group seems to know their business, particularly Sam, but each is in his own way cold and professional with his own field of expertise. Their only human side seems to be in tensions among the members of the team. The story is not very easy to follow. It is never clear who is double-crossing whom and who is working for whom. Somehow Russians (who may or may not be the Russian Mafia) and Irish radicals are involved trying to get their hands on a certain metal case.
Some very good actors are involved in this film. One wonders what they saw in the script. The characters are mostly one-dimensional professional killers. They know their work, and seeing their thought patterns adds some interest to the film, but for this group deep feeling between two people is teaming up with another killer so that neither is killed. By the end of the film we never really got to know anybody. Maybe that is the secret of why such good actors took parts, since these are not very demanding characters to create. In addition to the above characters the film also features Jonathan Pryce and Michael Lonsdale (the latter of MOONRAKER and of the superior thriller THE DAY OF THE JACKAL).
As a revival of a sort of action film that was popular in the 1960s, I was hoping that there would be something here to grab onto and enjoy. Unfortunately there are no deep characters, and little to make us care who eventually ends up with the metal case or why they want it. I rate RONIN a 4 on the 0 to 10 scale and a 0 on the -4 to +4 scale. NON-SPOILER: Incidentally, the tale of THE 47 RONIN has been filmed multiple times, usually under the title CHUSHINGURA or as THE 47 RONIN. Also one frequently sees in Japanese art the image of a man breaking down a door with a huge mallet. This is the first blow of the 47 Ronin.
Mark R. Leeper
mleeper@lucent.com
Copyright 1998 Mark R. Leeper
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews