• Ronin is rightly known for the brilliantly filmed and choreographed car chases. It’s not quite bullitt or the French connection (or even we own the night by James Gray) but it’s superb nonetheless
  • Oddly enough Frankenheimer directed the French Connection II—not the first one with the famous car chase
  • Solid ensemble case including Stellan Skarsgard, Sean Bean, Jonathan Pryce but the best part of the film is the largely unspoken friendship and mutual admiration between De Niro and Jean Reno’s character
  • Great chase set piece in a massive stadium
  • Cheese lines I could do without like “you’re interested in saving your own skin? Yeah, it covers my whole body”
  • Influenced by the dirty dozen, seven samurai (mainly) and French connection
  • Very nice intense scene of Reno and De Niro cleaning a wound on De Niro that is similar to the scene in Saving Private Ryan (also 1998) with Giovanni Ribisi
  • Though I enjoyed and am archiving ronin it’s a reminder of how superior something like Heat is
  • Gorgeous chases through the French Rivera
  • Feels like an Audi commercial at times
  • 47 Ronin– Warrior code—great scene between De Niro and Lonsdale as he has he builds miniatures of Samurai
  • The chase at the 90 minute mark is stunning, stunt work, editing, tunnel crash, wrong way traffic
  • Not a great de niro performance- he’s reacting here
  • Recommend but not in the top 10 of 1998