Ronin

Spectacular car chases and that is it

Features: Robert DeNiro, Jean Reno, Natascha McElhone
Director: John Frankenheimer
This was directed by John Frankenheimer? The Man who brought Seconds and Grand Prix to life? He must be falling on hard times because Ronin is a nothing. But if one wants the money to pay the bills, then one needs to work. Even if it means helming a piece of crap such as this. The same goes for DeNiro: one of those "actors" actors. He too has a movie pedigree: Taxi Driver, The Godfather, Part II. (But since both men's highlights clock back a quarter of a century, that probably tells the tale...)

The "story" has to do with some shady characters recovering a case from one group before it's turned over to another group. What does the case contain? Who knows. Who cares.

Course the requisite stereotypes abound on the team: the nervous would-be hot shot, too cool DeNiro, the computer nerd, the superlooker, the capable driver. Wotta shock.

The acting is from the first-one-to-notch-above-"deadpan"-loses school. They're on a grim mission, therefore everyone is grim. (Plus the story takes places in France during the winter, so the weather is equally grim.) Reno is his usual unshaven self. (Is this guy impervious to a razor?) McElhone, who possesses cheekbones that could cut glass in addition to her other breathtaking attributes, is grimly determined to be as grimly grim as the guys. Whatever.

Dialogue is completely abstruse. The screenwriter must've felt that to have anything said which wasn't impenetrable would've been a crime. Just why anything happens at all isn't explained to the very end. And when you hear it, all you think is: so what?

The "plot" is the usual. Whenever a new character is needed, voila!, there he is--such as the safehouse dude who just happens to possess needed surgical tools. Yessir, something I always keep in my medicine cabinet. Or the several times detective work had to be performed and was only successful because of suspension-of-disbelief-snapping coincidences. It wasn't as bad as The X-files movie, but Ronin was striving.

I will say this: the flick delivers in the wildass car chase department. They're zooming down roads and inches-to-spare streets like they're Autobahns. Plus these are chases where everything works out exactly right for someone to escape when need be: a detour here, a van there, all those cliches. But a movie of just car chases is like one consisting only of jaw-dropping special F/X--it doesn't make your ass hurt any less from suffering thru the lame movie. And Ronin will make your ass hurt. Count on it.

Plot holes abound: how could those character recover from their injuries so quickly? How is a puny Renault able to keep up with a monster BMW? Why did blah-blah do bleh-bleh? Again, whatever.

The music is lame. So too for the mediocre cinematography. You name the target and other than the Car Chase Bullseye, Ronin shoots nothing more than airballs. Such a waste.

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