| Ronin | |
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Ronin promotional movie poster |
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| Directed by | John Frankenheimer |
| Produced by | Frank Mancuso Jr. |
| Screenplay by | David Mamet |
| Story by | J.D. Zeik |
| Starring | Robert De Niro Jean Reno Natascha McElhone Stellan Skarsgård Sean Bean Jonathan Pryce |
| Music by | Elia Cmiral |
| Cinematography | Robert Fraisse |
| Editing by | Tony Gibbs |
| Studio | FGM Entertainment United Artists |
| Distributed by | Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer |
| Release date(s) | September 12, 1998 (Venice Film Festival) September 25, 1998 (United States) |
| Running time | 121 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $55 million |
| Box office | $290 million |
Ronin is a 1998 crime-thriller film directed by John Frankenheimer and written by J.D. Zeik and David Mamet. 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 its car chases through Nice and Paris.
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In a warehouse on the outskirts of Paris, Deirdre (Natascha McElhone), a young member of the Provisional IRA, meets with former special forces soldiers and intelligence operatives—Spence (Sean Bean), Larry (Skipp Sudduth), Gregor (Stellan Skarsgård), Vincent (Jean Reno), and Sam (Robert De Niro). Deirdre briefs the men on their mission: to attack a heavily armed convoy and steal a briefcase, its contents unknown. Afterward, the team meets with arms dealers for their equipment. Spence was too trusting of what Sam realizes was a double-cross. Sam saves Vincent's life and earns his gratitude and respect, and the team kills the dealers to obtain weapons and keep their money. Back at the warehouse, Spence displays a poor knowledge of combat strategy, and Sam exposes him as a fraud. Deirdre summarily dismisses Spence, advising him to "forget" everyone, because they will not forget him.
Deirdre meets with her handler, Seamus O'Rourke (Jonathan Pryce), who says that Russian gangsters are bidding for the case, so the team must act quickly to intercept it. Rejoining them, she and the team depart for Nice where, over several days, they observe the convoy and form a plan. The team ambushes the convoy and pursues the survivors on a lengthy car chase through the surrounding countryside. After a gun battle, Gregor takes the real case and gives an identical one to the team. Sam notices wet paint from the case, realizes it's booby-trapped, and throws it away in time. Gregor is gone.
Gregor first tries to sell the case to the Russians, but his contact betrays him, and Gregor shoots him. He next contacts Mikhi (Féodor Atkine), the leader of the gangsters, and threatens to sell the case to the IRA unless Mikhi pays a grossly inflated price for the case; Mikhi agrees. Meanwhile, the rest of the team track Gregor through one of Sam's old CIA contacts and corner him in the Roman arena in Arles. Following a tense standoff and hectic firefight, Gregor flees Sam and Vincent but is captured by Seamus, who kills Larry and escapes with Deirdre just as Sam and Vincent emerge from the coliseum. Sam is wounded in the fight and 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 him locate Gregor, Deirdre, and Seamus. Meanwhile, in Seamus' hideout, Gregor admits he mailed the case to himself. Days later, as they retrieve the case, they are ambushed by Vincent and Sam. Sam confronts Deirdre, who is waiting for Seamus and Gregor outside the post office. Realizing that Sam has feelings for her and will not shoot her, she speeds off. Following a high-speed chase through the streets and tunnels of Paris, Vincent shoots out Dierdre's tires and sends her car over a highway overpass. Gregor emerges from the car with the briefcase and once again escapes, while Deirdre and Seamus are rescued from the burning car by construction workers.
Vincent and Sam, pondering their options, discover that the case is a type used by figure skaters. Intelligence gleaned from Jean-Pierre's contacts also suggest the Russians are involved with figure skater Natacha Kirilova (Katarina Witt), Mikhi's protégé, who is appearing in a show at the local arena. Vincent and Sam appear at the arena as Mikhi, in the audience watching Natacha, receives a call and reluctantly goes backstage. At the meet, Mikhi exchanges money for the case when Gregor, preparing to leave, reveals there is a sniper somewhere in the arena who will shoot Natacha if Mikhi betrays him. Mikhi shoots Gregor anyway, the sniper shoots Natacha, and Mikhi leaves with the case and the money. Meanwhile, 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 runs ahead of Seamus and finds Deirdre sitting in the getaway car. He urges her to leave, revealing himself as a CIA agent pursuing Seamus, not the briefcase. Seamus shoots his way past the crowd, wounding Vincent, back to the arena, with Sam in pursuit. In the final gunfight, Seamus wounds Sam and is about to kill him when Vincent fatally shoots him from the scaffolding and collapses.
Days later, in a Parisian cafe, Sam and Vincent talk over radio broadcasts revealing a peace agreement reached between Sinn Féin and the British, partly as a result of Seamus's death. They part as friends, and Sam drives off with his CIA contact. Vincent pays the bill and leaves, disappearing into gloomy Paris. The contents of the case are never revealed.
Writer David Mamet is credited as "Richard Weisz", reportedly due to disappointment at having to share credit with Zeik (the originating writer). According to Zeik's lawyer, Mamet's contributions were "minor", limited to adding the character Deirdre and most of De Niro's scenes. According to Frankenheimer, however, "The credits should read: Story by J.D. Zeik, screenplay by David Mamet. We didn't shoot a line of Zeik's script."[1] This is confirmed by a copy of Zeik's original script, which shows his very minor contributions.[2]
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 honour 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.
According to Frankenheimer's recollections on the DVD, there were 2,200 shots used to film the story. He also notes that the film is unusual in containing no wipes, dissolves or similar techniques; all scene transitions are handled with suitably paced cuts.
Ronin is notable for a number of car chases, the last being a particularly lengthy one through the streets and tunnels of Paris; some scenes used up to 300 stunt drivers according to the DVD director commentary. Car work has been a specialty of Frankenheimer, a former amateur racing driver,[3] ever since his 1966 film, Grand Prix. Although action sequences are often shot by a second unit director, Frankenheimer did all these himself, and sometimes rode along. 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. To lend additional authenticity, the sound recordist re-recorded many of the vehicles in the chases to ensure that during the editing, the right sounds were dubbed in for each vehicle. The chases are also notable for their lack of musical score accompaniment, unusual in modern films, though the last chase ends with syncopated, non-melodic music. The choice of non-melodic music was easier to edit to, and has since become fashionable in film and television. Several cars are used in the chases, including an Audi S8 D2, a Peugeot 406, three Peugeot 605s, a Citroën Xantia and XM, a BMW M5 E34 and Mercedes-Benz 450SEL 6.9, a rare Mercedes-Benz W116 variant with a high-powered engine, as noted by Frankenheimer in the DVD.[4] Most famously, a 1998 Audi S8 quattro, portrayed as stolen to order and then fitted with a nitrous oxide power-booster, is chosen for its bulk, grip and torque and driven in Paris and Nice by Sudduth's character. As a result the car is rated 9th in Car magazine's Top 40 Coolest Movie Cars.[5] The Frankenheimer DVD commentary indicates that the cars were towed through the streets of France at high speed, not simulated, by a Mercedes-Benz 500E.
The final scene at the Paris Zénith had 2,000 extras, according to Frankenheimer.
The contents of the metal case are never revealed. 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. In fact, in earlier versions of the script, the briefcase is destroyed at the climax. Sam observes that only the top men in the Russian mob and the IRA, plus a handful of men in the CIA, knew what was in the case. The briefcase is itself a plot device known as a MacGuffin. Its contents are unknown but serve as the motivation that drives the film. Its use is very similar to the MacGuffin that is a part of the film Pulp Fiction. The plot device in that film is, indeed, a briefcase with unknown contents. In the DVD's director's commentary, Frankenheimer says that in the film, Seamus is the only person who actually needs to know what the case contains. As an aside, on the film's web site when Ronin was in theatres, the public could suggest and vote for what they thought could be in the case. Other popular suggestions is that it contained a nuclear weapon initiator, which increases the yield of a thermo-nuclear weapon; hence the Russians were keen to get their hands on it.
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.[6] He is credited as "Ron Hiatt", which is similar to his surname by birth, "Hyatt".
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 Diana's 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 allows you navigate through the titles of the disc manually. A "Gold Edition" was briefly introduced on the market by MGM, however is no longer in production.
On October 11, 2004 a two-disc Special Edition of the film was released in the US. This new version contains the same material as the old single-disc version on disc one and on disc two there are supplemental material about the film: one documentary, six featurettes, and a picture gallery.
A Blu-ray Disc edition was made available in 2008, which does not include any of the extras on the DVD versions.
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