Despite Robert De Niro being one of the biggest actors from the 1970s into the 1990s, I can honestly say I never saw any advertisements for Ronin before it came out. I had heard so little about it, that I didn’t even know that it existed until I watched it about five years after it was released. When I did finally see it, however, I quickly realized how great of a movie it was, and it instantly became a favorite of mine. When you consider how Taken as a franchise blew up a few years later, it makes me wonder why Ronin couldn’t have gotten the same recognition.

The biggest downside to my fandom for Ronin is that I insisted a friend of mine see it for himself. So, I let him borrow my Blu-ray, but I’ve not seen that disc in about a decade. Ronin and Rocky are two classic movies with one-word titles starting with the letter R that I need to get back from him someday…

What Is It?

A group of freelance mercenaries with very specific sets of skills are recruited to do the dangerous job of stealing a suitcase. Some of the team meet in a small bar in Paris before they’re brought to a hidden HQ to meet the rest of the team and become familiar with the task. Sam (Robert De Niro) is the inquisitive one, asking as many questions as possible to better understand the task at hand. He also is very curious about what is in the case and is sure to ask “What’s in the case?” at every opportunity. The team leader Diedre (Natascha McElhone) is very tight-lipped about everything and defers to Vincent (Jean Reno) to acquire the tools the rest of the team needs. There are some upsets that occur after a trade for weapons goes awry, and some betrayals down the road that lead to some real twists and turns in the plot by the end. Ronin starts out as a simple heist movie that suddenly escalates in the second act with some incredible chase and action sequences in a classic crime thriller.

What Makes It Stand Out?

The low-hanging fruit aspect of Ronin that makes it stand out among other movies is the quality of the action scenes. More specifically, there are two absolutely amazing car chases in Ronin that more than justify its viewing. If you have never seen Ronin or its chase scenes, you are doing yourself a disservice. The chase sequences themselves are relatively long and have numerous different camera angles that help add tension to the action. There will be wide shots to establish how fast the cars are going on a road, and really close bumper shots to make them seem even faster. There are several moments in the first chase alone, in which stunt doubles had to jump out of the way of the cars that drift through different obstacles in the street, which made me uncomfortable just with how close the vehicles get to hitting people. After such a cool chase, you’d be surprised to know that the second car chase sequence is even better and more intense.

There’s more to Ronin that makes it a great film than just the action, however. The characters are intelligent and it’s made apparent by the film’s show-don’t-tell delivery with good acting and concise dialogue. With everything that happens in Ronin, you want smart characters who make logical choices and who are doing so in a way that makes the audience feel good if they catch on. It makes the audience respect the characters as well as feel involved in the action. Just in the opening scene, this is immediately clear. Allow me to describe with a brief spoiler of the scene:

Robert De Niro’s character, Sam, is walking down the streets of Paris. He stops a few meters away from a bar and watches it for a minute as people come and go. He walks along the alleyways beside the bar, scoping the place out. Then, he comes around to the back entrance, looks around, and hides a sidearm between the building and a few crates of glass bottles before walking into the bar from the front door. Once he gets in, an employee tells him they’re closed, but Sam convinces him he’ll be done soon with just one drink. Before he sits down, he asks where the bathroom is, which happens to be by the back door. Walking to the back, he unlocks the back door and looks out before turning back, pretending to be confused. The employee points to the other side and he goes into the bathroom. After he comes out, the bar really closes and the people involved in the heist all start to leave through the back, with Diedre asking what Sam was doing. His response is a quote that easily establishes who Sam is. “Lady, I never walk into a place I don’t know how to walk out of.”

Sam is full of succinct, witty quotes that blend a calm level of wisdom and snark. In every interaction, you get the impression that he’s smarter than he’s letting on and that he’s always sizing up people around him. The interactions he has with Sean Bean’s character show that he figured him out the moment he met him. His interactions with Stellan Skarsgard’s character, Gregor, are completely different in that he sets up scenarios to check him and get a better read on who he is. This is all done through the acting and mostly innocuous dialogue, but if you’re paying attention, and if you respect the characters enough to assume they’re smarter than the average person, you’ll start to notice these details with each interaction, which is immensely satisfying to watch. It’s similar in quality to the script from another favorite film, The Edge, in which the dialogue is efficient and understated, allowing the actors’ performances to fill in the gaps. It’s no surprise when you consider that David Mamet wrote the script for both movies, and his style was all about snappy, yet subtle dialogue that doesn’t over-explain everything in the moment.

Smart characters and efficient dialogue are key components of a good heist film. While some of the best heist movies have great action sequences, the planning and setup for the actual heist is what makes the movie genre so engaging. Ronin’s opening scene establishes the patient and careful approach of its main characters. So, as the group gets closer and closer to the date of the job, we get to see a lot of the planning with some great scenes that further demonstrate how smart the characters are.

One other factor of note that I think makes Ronin particularly special in comparison to other heist action movies is the score. The composer, Elia Cmiral, provides music that feels more at home in a horror movie. There are a lot of string instruments that are either slowly intensifying or just harsh stings that would work well with jump scares. Other heist movies use music that tends to be a little more laid back during the planning stage to make the characters seem cool and confident, like Inception or Heist for example. Ronin’s music is always tense, as though it’s meant to channel the feelings of the characters who understand how dangerous their job is. Even when the team is in their HQ and in no immediate danger, and even when everyone seems to be relaxed, you get the impression that there’s always something bubbling under the surface with how the music can jump in at any time to build the tension once again.

Why You’re Wrong if You Disagree

Ronin was, unfortunately, a movie that did not do very well at the box office. As I said at the top, I didn’t hear about it until years after it had come out, so I have to assume the reason it didn’t make its money back was due to poor marketing. It certainly was not from the quality of the movie. Still, I would love to hear some arguments to the contrary.

What could the arguments be? If you say the movie is slow or boring, you must not like paying attention while watching movies. Maybe you hate smart characters, subtle acting, or cool car chases. If you say it’s cliché to have the plot centered around a MacGuffin, I’d be happy to point out other movies from the same decade that are revered but use the same plot device, like Pulp Fiction for example. Perhaps you have the asinine modern-audience argument of not enough representation in the cast. If that’s the case, you’re beyond help because that likely means you can’t enjoy any movies that were released before 2016.

The main takeaway of this section of this review is that we just don’t get movies like Ronin anymore. If we ever do, they’re a complete anomaly. Ronin might bump up against a two-hour run-time, but it still feels extremely efficient in ways that most modern movies are not. Ronin is attempting to tell a complicated story with intelligent, dishonest characters with unclear motives during several distinct acts as the MacGuffin suitcase changes hands. It relies on the dialogue to not tell the audience anything we can’t already get from the performances of the actors. I’d argue this is one of Robert De Niro’s best movies because we see all the different shades of Sam as a character, and his performance is made better by how the character interacts with the rest of the team. We can tell based on how he talks to the other team members who he trusts, who he respects, and who he doesn’t. My favorite scene that highlights this is when he interrupts the plan from Sean Bean’s character. The tone of the scene goes from casual to extremely intense, while making sure to give the audience hints as to what is about to happen. It’s the culmination of every interaction both characters have had with one another and nothing is wasted even after the drama of the moment is over.

We get so many films out of Hollywood that go well beyond two hours and thirty minutes that feel extremely bloated and filled with scenes that don’t do enough to justify their existence. If this were a modern film, it would be over three hours long. The writing would have characters explain everything in clunky dialogue. The editing would just include unnecessary scenes that either screw up the continuity of the film because they were involved in lengthy reshoots, or because some political message needed to be shoehorned in. And the car chases would be several minutes too long with a majority of it on a green screen, instead of on-location and with people in any real danger.

Consider this as just a simple comparison of what to expect from modern movies versus the films of the previous century: According to the trivia on IMDB, approximately 80 cars were totaled in the making of this movie. What does that tell you about the risks that were taken in order to deliver a movie like Ronin?

TL;DR

I’m not going to go so far as to say that Ronin is a perfect film, but it’s difficult for me to find flaws. When it comes to other crime thrillers and heist movies, there are many others that are more recognizable and iconic, like Heat, Oceans Eleven, or The Italian Job. Ronin is a smaller film that feels like it is more gritty and close to reality. As a result, it’s more tense than the fun Ocean’s Eleven films, making Ronin not exactly a relaxing movie to watch. However, it’s also a lot shorter than Heat and has action sequences that I personally prefer. While it may not be the crime thriller that I’m always in the mood for, it’s probably my favorite.