Ronin (1999, VHS)

Did you ever kill anybody? Spence I hurt somebody's feelings once. Sam Deirdre (Natascha McElhone), an enigmatic Irish woman, gathers together a crack international mercenary team of former operatives from various covert services to rob a mysterious aluminum case for an unidentified buyer. These operatives are the Ronin of the title - masterless samurai who work for pay. They have been trained by their respective governments in certain unique skills only to be discarded when no longer needed. Now, I've explained it a heckuva lot better than the movie does, so remember: you read it here first!.

There's a scene early in Ronin where we get the feeling of where this movie is going. We see Robert DeNiro walking down a Paris street to a cafe of sorts where a meeting is going to take place. We see the other meeting guests arrive and we watch as DeNiro carefully scouts the place out. We then see him enter and test the other door to see if there's another exit before announcing, "I never walk into a room I don't know how to walk out of". There is the essence of Ronin. The movie is an action-adventure flick that is actually smart, yet human. It has characters that are smart, yet they aren't..

I remember seeing the original trailer for the 1998 Robert DeNiro film Ronin, and dismissing the movie as simply another two hours of car chases, gun fights and explosions. I recently discovered that to some extent I was correct, but there is a fairly decent plot hidden beneath the obvious theatricalities, but a plot which does not quite live up to its potential. The film opens in one of the seedier sections of Paris, with DeNiro strolling into a dilapidated bar and casually making contact with several of the locals, who of course are not what they appear to be. This brief interlude leads to.

The Cold War's over. It was fun while it lasted. In the crummy rump-end of Paris a group of unemployed cold warriors meet in a little bar for a job interview. Robert De Nero plays Sam, nobody in this movie has a last name, a former CIA officer who has, for reasons never elaborated upon, gone free-lance. He is recruited as part of a team of professionals formerly of the security services of both sides in the recent unpleasantness known as the Cold War. Jean Reno ("The Professional") is Vincent and Sean Bean (Boromir from "The Lord of the Rings") plays Spence a guns and musle guy recently...