RONIN (63)

Directed by: John Frankenheimer

Starring: Robert de Niro, Jean Reno, Natascha McElhone, Stellan Skarsgard

The Pitch: A team of international mercenaries is brought together by a shadowy Irish group to steal a vitally important briefcase.

Theo Sez: Unusual texture, though probably more by chance than design : partly it's the mix of glossy car-movie action and poky European locations (the cars still chase each other, but they have gear-sticks and race through outdoor markets in narrow Provencal streets), but mostly it's the way fashionable nihilism bumps against old-fashioned hokum. Its characters are cool, affectless pros - getting excited is the mark of an amateur - "hired swords" speaking in cryptic snatches ("Seven fat years and seven lean years") or spouting wry, side-of-the-mouth quips ; yet they seem to inhabit a pleasantly musty 60s spy movie, a world where people talk in code, give each other secret signals, meet covertly in unlikely places - where envelopes are exchanged on a Metro escalator, neither party looking at the other. It's strangely comforting to bite through the hard shell of metallic colours and gimlet-eyed, state-of-the-art matter-of-factness to discover a soft, sweet centre of international intrigue in the spirit of ARABESQUE or THE IPCRESS FILE (not to mention a climax drawing heavily on THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH) ; it makes for an odd, timeless film, not so much cosmopolitan as stateless (archetypal man-without-a-country Michel / Michael Lonsdale is inspired casting in a minor role), amusing even in its detail - like the gadget that turns traffic lights from green to red, enabling our heroes to stall the car they're pursuing long enough to make their move. It just seems churlish to wonder what would've happened if the light had been red in the first place.