Review: Ronin

By definition, a rōnin is a samurai without a master. They were known as men who would take jobs for money instead of honor, loyalty or any of that stuff. In short, they were mercenaries. In the film Ronin, we see a group of men who could be described as modern-day versions of these ancient Japanese men who were viewed as a disgrace by their fellow samurai warriors.

Sam (Robert De Niro) is a former CIA operative who is one of the five men recruited by a mysterious woman named Deidre (Natascha McElhone) to do a job. She wants the men to retrieve a briefcase, but she refuses to tell them what is in it. After they accept the offer from the woman, They go all over France to get the briefcase and must also deal with the people who are carrying it. They have to go through firefights and car chases around the country while still not knowing what's in the briefcase, who they're really working for or who they're truly working with.

Ronin is a movie that's action orientated. These are set pieces that almost always begin slowly as if it wants to build anticipation, but it feels like the action quickly jumps out at you out of nowhere even though you know it's coming. These scenes are long and drawn out while still maintaining the ability to move at a swift pace at the same time. You can say that the action has a sense of style because of this and Ronin seems to hang on that more than anything else.

When it tries to focus on other things besides shootouts and car chases, Ronin hits a bit of a wall. The characters didn't have much personality to offer and are somewhat dry. We don't learn much about who they are and I think those are some of the reasons why it didn't pull me in as much as I wanted it to. In that sense, you can say that the actors were underutilized. You're talking about some credible actors here when you look at this cast and it would have been best to give them more to do in terms of expressing themselves.

Ronin is about two hours long, but it moves quicker than that. It doesn't waste anytime getting into the plot and was ready to deliver what I was expecting. There's nothing innovative about the movie, but it did do some smart things including something that I can't really give away. The thing that I'm talking about hasn't been done much, but it's kind of cool and I'd like to see more of it. When I think about it, more films doing it might take away from what makes it a nice addition to the movies that use it.

This is a movie that you can sit back and enjoy as an action film. There's not a ton of other things going on when it comes to depth or character development, but they do have a couple of nice twists that will shake things up a little bit. Ronin is a movie that's likeable simply based on what it is. It's a straight forward shoot-em-up that gets into the action as quickly as possible and almost never veers of course and that may be enough if you're in the mood for wall to wall action.

Score: 3/5

Rating: R

Director: John Frankenheimer

Cast:
Robert De Niro
Jean Reno
Natascha McElhone
Sean Bean
Stellan Skarsgaard
Skipp Sudduth
Jonathan Pryce

Film Length: 121 minutes

Release Date: September 25, 1998

Distributor: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

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