#265: Ronin

Release Date: September 25th, 1998

Format: Streaming (Tubi)

Written by: David Mamet (billed as Richard Weisz) and J.D. Zeik

Directed by: John Frankenheimer

3.5 Stars

John Frankenheimer’s penultimate film from 1998, Ronin, is an underrated action thriller. The 68-year-old director’s mise-en-scène is probably the film’s greatest strength, and that’s really saying something, because Ronin is most known for its incredible car chases.

Those car chases are a whole lot of fun, don’t get me wrong. If any movie in the world is going to inspire you to buy a luxury ‘90s German sedan and aggressively downshift into your turns, this is the one. Frankenheimer doesn’t use a single frame of CGI in the filming, instead opting for real-life racecar drivers for the stunts and utilizing a $55 million budget to cover the damages. Like I said, it’s tremendous fun.

But what makes Ronin such a rewarding film to revisit every few years is how effectively Frankenheimer utilizes the screen. A long-time resident of Paris, he knows just how and where to film the city, without relying on its most public iconography. Instead Frankenheimer gives us dour cobblestone sidestreets and smoky cafes, all bathed in various shades of slate and black. His protagonists, an opaque international crew of ex-governmental spies and mercenaries tasked with stealing a heavily guarded briefcase, are clothed in dark grays and browns, hats sometimes pulled low, smoking French cigarettes.  

All of these visual elements lend the film an immersive verisimilitude that really grabs you, despite the fact that Frankenheimer can’t quite successfully hide some of the flaws in the plot, especially the convoluted climax (David Mamet was brought in to polish up the script from first-time screenwriter J.D. Zeik, and you can sense some incohesion in the writing at times). 

It’s not a perfect action thriller, but its mood (and those damn exciting car chases) have made it an underrated favorite for many fans of the genre.