Ronin (1998)
Ronin is a 1998 American action thriller film directed by John Frankenheimer and written by John David Zeik and David Mamet, under the pseudonym Richard Weisz. It stars Robert De Niro, Jean Reno, Natascha McElhone, Stellan Skarsgård, Sean Bean, and Jonathan Pryce. The film is about a team of former special operatives hired to steal a mysterious, heavily guarded briefcase while navigating a maze of shifting loyalties. The film was praised for its realistic car chases in Nice and Paris. Frankenheimer signed to direct Zeik’s screenplay, which Mamet rewrote to expand De Niro’s role and develop plot details, in 1997. The film was photographed by Robert Fraisse in his native France from November 3, 1997, to March 3, 1998. Professional racing car drivers coordinated and performed the vehicle stunts, and Elia Cmiral scored the film, his first for a major studio.
Ronin premiered at the 1998 Venice Film Festival before its general release on September 25. Critics were generally positive about the film’s action, casting, and technical aspects, while the plot attracted criticism. The film performed moderately well at the box office, grossing $70.7 million on a budget of $55 million. Ronin, Frankenheimer’s last well-received feature film, was considered to be a return to form for the director. Film critic and historian Stephen Prince called the film Frankenheimer’s “end-of-career masterpiece”. The car chases, which were favorably compared with those in Bullitt and The French Connection, were included on several media outlets’ lists as among the best depicted on film.
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Plot.
At a bistro in Montmartre, IRA operative Deirdre meets with two Americans, Sam and Larry, and a Frenchman, Vincent. She takes them to a warehouse where the Englishman Spence and the German Gregor are waiting. Conversations between the men show that they are all ex-government agents or ex-military-turned-mercenary. Deirdre briefs them on their mission: to attack a heavily armed convoy and steal a large, metallic briefcase, which functions as the film’s MacGuffin. Its contents are never revealed. The team’s first task before the main mission is to acquire weapons; this turns into a setup. Although the team survives and they get the weapons, Spence is exposed as a fraud by Sam.
He is dismissed by Deirdre and the others continue the mission. As the team prepares, Deirdre meets with her handler, Seamus O’Rourke, who tells her that the Russian mafia is bidding for the case and that the team must intervene before they get it. During a stakeout, Sam and Deirdre act on their mutual attraction.
Deirdre’s team successfully ambushes the convoy at La Turbie and pursues the survivors to Nice. During the gunfight, Gregor steals the case and disappears. He negotiates selling it to the Russians, but his contact attempts to betray him. Gregor kills the contact, then has Mikhi — the Russian Mafioso in charge of the deal — agree to another meeting.
The team tracks Gregor through one of Sam’s old CIA contacts and corners him in the Arles Amphitheatre during his meeting with two of Mikhi’s men. Sam chases Gregor; Gregor flees but is caught by Seamus. Deirdre and Vincent confront the two Russian thugs, causing a shootout. Sam arrives to help, killing one, but catches a ricochet from the other when Vincent knocks away the thug’s gun in order to kill him. Seamus kills Larry and escapes with a reluctant Deirdre and the captured Gregor. Vincent takes Sam to a villa owned by his friend, Jean-Pierre. After removing the bullet and letting Sam recuperate, Vincent asks Jean-Pierre to help them find Gregor and the Irish operatives.
Production.
In July 1997, Variety reported that Frankenheimer had signed to direct Ronin, making it his fifth picture for United Artists. Frankenheimer told the magazine he chose the project because it had a “very good script” and was “the kind of movie I’d love to go see … What I like is, it’s a character-driven action picture, and I have done those before, with Black Sunday and French Connection II. It’s not one of these CGI pictures, it’s a film about people. It’s not bigger than life, which I don’t relate to that much.” He also saw it as an opportunity to apply his broad knowledge and understanding of France, especially Paris, in which he resided for many years. He added, “I would not have been able to do the film nearly as well anywhere else”.RELATED:
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His films The Train (1964), Grand Prix (1966), Impossible Object (1973), and French Connection II (1975) were shot in France.
Many of Ronin’s principal crew members had worked with Frankenheimer on television films; editor Tony Gibbs on George Wallace, set designer Michael Z. Hanan on George Wallace and The Burning Season (1994), and costume designer May Routh on Andersonville (1996). Frankenheimer chose French cinematographer Robert Fraisse to help him achieve the look and style he wanted for the film. Fraisse impressed Frankenheimer with his work on the police thriller Citizen X (1995), which persuaded the director Fraisse could handle the more-than-2,000 setups he planned for Ronin. Frank Mancuso Jr. served as the film’s producer.
Stunts.
Frankenheimer avoided using special effects in the car-chase scenes, previsualizing them with storyboards and used the same camera mounts as those used on Grand Prix. The actors were placed inside the cars while being driven at up to 100 mph (160 km/h), by Formula One driver Jean-Pierre Jarier, and high-performance drivers Jean-Claude Lagniez and Michel Neugarten. The actors had enrolled at a high-performance driving school before production began. According to Lagniez, the car-stunt coordinator, it was a priority not to cheat the speed by adjusting the frame rate; he said, “When you do, it affects the lighting. It is different at 20 frames than at 24 frames.” However, Fraisse said: “Sometimes, but not very often, we did shoot at 22 frames per second, or 21.” Point-of-view shots from cameras mounted below the cars’ front fender were used to deliver a heightened sense of speed.
For the final chase scene, which used 300 stunt drivers the production team bought four BMW 535is and five Peugeot 406s;[a] one of each was cut in half and towed by a Mercedes-Benz 500 E while the actors were inside them. Right-hand drive versions of the cars were also purchased; a dummy steering wheel was installed on the left side while the stunt drivers drove the speeding vehicles. The final chase had very little music because Frankenheimer thought music and sound effects do not blend well. Sound engineer Mike Le Mare recorded all of the film’s cars on a racetrack, mixing them later in post-production.
Frankenheimer refused to film the gunfights in slow motion, believing onscreen violence should be depicted in real time. Mick Gould, the film’s technical advisor and a former instructor in the advanced training wings of the Special Air Service, trained the cast in weapons-handling and guerilla military tactics. The physical stunts were coordinated by Joe Dunne.
