Ronin is a 1998 American neo-noir action thriller film directed by John Frankenheimer and written by John David Zeik and David Mamet, the latter under the pseudonym Richard Weisz. It stars an ensemble cast consisting of Robert De Niro, Jean Reno, Natascha McElhone, Stellan Skarsgård, Sean Bean and Jonathan Pryce. The film centers around 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 in 1997 to expand De Niro's role and develop plot details. The film was photographed by Robert Fraisse in his native France from November 3, 1997, to March 3, 1998. Professional race 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 underperformed at the box office, grossing $70.7 million on a $55 million budget. 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.
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 Englishman Spence and German Gregor are waiting. Conversations among the men reveal that they are former government and military agents who have become mercenaries. Deirdre briefs the group on their mission: to attack a heavily armed convoy and steal a large, metallic briefcase, whose content is never revealed.
The team's first preparation task is to acquire firearms, which turns into an ambush; the team survives and gets the weapons. Deirdre meets with her handler, Seamus O'Rourke, who tells her that the Russian mafia is bidding on the briefcase and that the team must intervene to prevent them from winning. Spence is exposed as a fraud by Sam; he is dismissed by Deirdre, and the others continue their mission.
Deirdre's team successfully ambushes the convoy at Villefranche-sur-Mer and pursues the survivors to Nice. During the gunfight, Gregor steals the case and replaces it with explosives in an attempt to sabotage the others. He attempts selling it to the Russians, but his contact betrays him; Gregor kills the contact and has Mikhithe Russian mobster in charge of the dealagree to another meeting. The team tracks Gregor through one of Sam's old contacts and corners him in the Arles Amphitheatre during his meeting with two of Mikhi's men. Sam chases Gregor, who flees but is caught by Seamus.
Deirdre and Vincent confront the two Russian hoods, prompting a shootout. Sam arrives to help, killing one, but is injured by a ricochet from the other. Seamus kills Larry and escapes with a reluctant Deirdre and the captured Gregor. Vincent takes Sam to a villa that is owned by his friend Jean-Pierre. After removing the bullet and letting Sam recuperate, Jean-Pierre compares Sam's situation to the tale of the 47 Ronin. Vincent asks Jean-Pierre to help them find Gregor and the Irish operatives.
In Paris, Gregor is persuaded through violent interrogation to return the case to Seamus and Deirdre. After retrieving it from a post office, they are pursued by Sam and Vincent in a high-speed chase. Vincent shoots out their tire, sending their car off an overpass. Gregor escapes with the case while road workers rescue Deirdre and Seamus from the burning vehicle. Doubtful of where to go next, Sam and Vincent decide to track down the Russians after discovering that the decoy case that Gregor used in his theft of the original is used for carrying ice skates; one of Jean-Pierre's contacts informs them that the Russians may be involved with figure-skater (and Mikhi's girlfriend) Natacha Kirilova, who is performing at Le Zénith.
During Natacha's show, Mikhi meets with Gregor, who says that a sniper in the arena will shoot Natacha if Mikhi betrays him. Mikhi kills Gregor and takes the case, allowing Natacha to be killed by the sniper. Amid the ensuing chaos from Natacha's shooting, Sam and Vincent leave the arena in time to see Seamus kill Mikhi and steal the case. Sam and Vincent split up; Vincent pursues Seamus but is wounded in a gunfight. Sam finds Deirdre waiting in a getaway car and convinces her to leave, after explaining that he is still in the CIA and is after Seamus, not the case. As she drives away, Seamus is forced to return to the arena as Sam gives chase. Seamus ambushes Sam but is shot dead by Vincent before Seamus can kill Sam.
Sam and Vincent have coffee in the bistro where they first met. A radio broadcast announces that a peace agreement between Sinn Féin and the British government has been reached, partially as a result of Seamus's death. Sam keeps glancing at the door as patrons enter, but Vincent convinces Sam that Deirdre will not be coming back. They shake hands and part ways, but not before Vincent asks what was in the case. Sam replies that he does not remember. Sam drives off with his CIA contact as Vincent pays the bill and leaves.
Cast
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 that 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, where he resided for many years. He added, "I would not have been able to do the film nearly as well anywhere else." His films The Train (1964), Grand Prix (1966), Impossible Object (1973) and French Connection II (1975) were shot in France.
Many of Ronins 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 that he wanted for the film. Fraisse impressed Frankenheimer with his work on the police thriller Citizen X (1995), which persuaded the director to believe that Fraisse could handle the more-than-2,000 setups that he planned for Ronin. Frank Mancuso Jr. served as the film's producer.
According to Frankenheimer, French authorities helped him circumvent a strict Paris ordinance that prohibited film productions from firing guns in the city. This was enacted because many civilians had been complaining about the gunfire noise produced by film shoots. Additional factors influenced the decision; officials' desire for an American action film like Ronin, few of which had been filmed there since the law was passed, to be filmed in Paris, and the desire to boost France's reputation as a filming location.
Screenplay Writer John David Zeik, a newcomer to film, conceived the idea for Ronin after reading James Clavell's novel Shōgun at age 15. It gave him background information on rōnin (masterless samurai), which he incorporated into a screenplay years later. On choosing France as the story's key location, Zeik said, "Many years later in Nice, the location of one of the key set pieces of the story, I stared into the sun and saw the silhouettes of five heavily armed gendarmes crossing the Promenade des Anglais. That image made me realize that I wanted to set the film in France."
Accounts differ regarding the screenplay's authorship. According to Zeik's attorney, playwright David Mamet was hired shortly before production to expand De Niro's role and add a female love interest. Although Mamet rewrote several scenes, his contributions were minor, according to Zeik's account. Frankenheimer said that Mamet's contributions were more significant. The studio submitted a request that "The credits should read: 'Story by J.D. Zeik, screenplay by David Mamet.' We didn't shoot a line of Zeik's script." Frankenheimer subsequently retracted this in a September 1998 open letter published in Variety, writing that "J.D. Zeik is unequivocally entitled to the first position screenwriting credit as well as the sole story credit he was awarded by the WGA ... [He] deserves recognition for his significant contribution to this film, and I am proud to have worked with him." When he learned that he would have to share credit with Zeik, Mamet insisted on being credited with the pseudonym Richard Weisz because he had earlier decided to attach his name only to projects for which he was the sole writer.
Filming and cinematography
Ronin was produced on a budget of $55 million (equivalent to $ million in ). Principal photography lasted for 78 days, beginning on November 3, 1997, in an abandoned workshop at Aubervilliers. Scenes at Porte des Lilas and the historic Arles Amphitheatre were filmed in November; after which the crew filmed at the Hotel Majestic in Cannes, La Turbie and Villefranche.
Production was suspended for Christmas on December 19 and resumed on January 5, 1998, at Épinay, where the crew built two interior sets on sound stages; one for the bistro in Montmartre and another for the rural farmhouse, both of which also have exterior location shots. The climactic scene with a panicked crowd at Le Zénith required approximately 2,000 extras who were supervised by French casting director Margot Capelier. Filming concluded at La Défense on March 3, 1998.
Because there were no second unit director and camera operator to film the action scenes, Frankenheimer and cinematographer Robert Fraisse supervised them for an additional 30 days after the main unit finished filming. The first major car-chase scene was shot in La Turbie and Nice; the rest were filmed in areas of Paris, including La Défense and the Pont du Garigliano. Scenes set in a road tunnel were filmed at night because it was impossible to block tunnel traffic during the day. The freeway chase, in which the actors dodge oncoming vehicles, was filmed in four hours on a closed road.
Frankenheimer's affinity for deep depth of field led him to shoot the film entirely with wide-angle lenses ranging in focal length from 18 to 35 mm using the common top Super 35 format, both of which allow more of the scene to be included in each shot, as well as the freedom to reframe the movie for Full Screen presentation.
The director also avoided bright primary colors to preserve a first-generation-of-film quality. He advised the actors and extras not to wear bright colors and had the film processed with Deluxe's Color Contrast Enhancement (CCE), "a silver-retention method of processing film that deepens blacks, reduces color, and heightens the visible appearance of film grain". Fraisse said that he used a variety of cameras, including Panaflexes for dialogue scenes, and Arriflex 435s and 35-IIIs for the car chases, to facilitate Frankenheimer's demands. Steadicam, a camera stabilizer used for half of the shoot, was operated by the director's longtime collaborator David Crone. According to Frankenheimer, 2,200 shots were filmed.
Stunts