Movie Reviews

Cool movie!

Ronin has an incredible amount of style, energy, and action, and the really amazing thing about it is how realistic it all seems: action movies too often try to wow the audience by cramming in relentless amounts of unrealistic stunts and explosions, without realizing that it can be many times more interesting to see car crashes and such happen in realistic ways (hmm, sounds kind of morbid, doesn't it?). There are two or three really amazing car chases in Ronin, and they're all quite realistic-looking (see The French Connection for an excellent earlier example of "realistic car chases", and the 2002 The Bourne Identity for another modern example).

There is, however, more to the movie than it's car chases. I liked how everyone in the film seemed desperate to acquire a large silver suitcase thing, but it's never explained what's inside it (Film Geek Trivia Alert: this sort of film device is called a "McGuffin"). Furthermore, there are plot-twists abound, and the acting is excellent, especially by Robert Deniro and Jean Reno as two old criminal pros who develop an interesting friendship on the job.