Trailer
Plot summary
A team of outcast specialists gathers in Montmartre. Sam, Larry and Vincent are brought together by Deirdre, who then leads them to a warehouse where Spence and Gregor are waiting. All of the men were once government or military operatives and now sell their skills. The job she lays out is an attack on a heavily armed convoy to steal a large metallic briefcase, and its contents are not disclosed to anyone. First the group must find firearms, and that errand turns into an ambush they survive with the weapons in hand. Deirdre afterward meets Seamus O'Rourke, her handler, who says the Russian mafia is bidding for the briefcase as well, and the team cannot let them have it.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Ronin (1998)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- 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. Zeik's account calls Mamet's contributions minor; Frankenheimer said they were more significant, and the studio requested credits reading “We didn't shoot a line of Zeik's script.”
- 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.
- According to Frankenheimer, French authorities helped him circumvent a strict Paris ordinance that prohibited film productions from firing guns in the city. The rule was enacted because many civilians had been complaining about the gunfire noise produced by film shoots.
- Writer John David Zeik, a newcomer to film, conceived the idea for Ronin after reading James Clavell's novel Shōgun at age 15, which gave him the background on rōnin, masterless samurai. He set the film in France after staring into the sun in Nice and seeing the silhouettes of five heavily armed gendarmes crossing the Promenade des Anglais.
- To preserve a first-generation-of-film quality the director avoided bright primary colors, advising the actors and extras not to wear them, and had the film processed with Deluxe's Color Contrast Enhancement, a silver-retention method that deepens blacks, reduces color and heightens the visible appearance of film grain.
- The car-stunt coordinator, Lagniez, made it a priority not to cheat the speed of the chases by adjusting the frame rate, because it affects the lighting: “It is different at 20 frames than at 24 frames.” Even so, the crew did sometimes shoot at 22 or 21 frames per second.
- For the final chase scene, which used 300 stunt drivers, the production bought four BMW 535is and five Peugeot 406s; one of each was cut in half and towed by a Mercedes-Benz 500 E while the actors were inside. Right-hand drive versions were also bought, with a dummy steering wheel installed on the left side while the stunt drivers drove.
- Frankenheimer hired Czech composer Elia Cmíral, who said that he “was far away from being even a 'B' composer at that time”. For a main theme that would incorporate qualities of “sadness, loneliness, and heroism”, Cmíral performed with the duduk, an ancient double-reed woodwind flute that originated in Armenia.
