A group of mercenaries are hired to steal a mysterious briefcase, but are soon betrayed by one of their own. Ronin is a film about pros made by a pro (John Frankenheimer) and starring a lot of pros (Robert De Niro, Jean Reno, Natascha McElhone, Stellan Skarsgård, Michael Lonsdale, Sean Bean, Jonathan Pryce). Unfortunately, the pros handling the script (including a pseudonym using David Mamet) phone it in resulting in plot and characters that are fairly basic. But no one really watches Ronin for the plot and characters. They watch it for those blistering car chases around France where you can just tell De Niro is shitting himself the entire time.
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐
This is one of those iconic movies that gets by on vibes more than anything else. The plot is forgettable and there really is nothing at all distinctive about the title character, save for the fact that he's played by Steve McQueen at his absolute coolest. That's essentially all Bullitt really is. A movie designed solely to make its already cool leading man look even cooler. And it does that by bursting out that amazing Lalo Schifrin score at every opportunity, except when it comes time to let Steve drive his Ford Mustang really really, really, really fast around the streets of San Francisco.
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐
This feels like William Friedkin trying to do The French Connection for the 1980s. Both films follow obsessive lawmen who cross numerous lines in their reckless pursuit of a criminal, in this case William Petersen's dodgy Secret Service agent and Willem Dafoe's master counterfeiter. Both also feature utterly insane car chases; this time Friedkin sends his protagonists speeding up the wrong way of a busy L.A. freeway. But where The French Connection was all about the gritty urban realism of the 1970s, this film fully embraces the stylistic excess of the 1980s, which isn't necessary a bad thing when you have a cinematographer as a good as Robby Müller working for you.
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
In a post-apocalyptic wasteland full of leather fetish gear and gas guzzlers, where warring clans fight over the limited resources, lone wanderer Max Rockatansky comes to the aid of a community under siege from the war dogs of Lord Humungus. When people try to think of what a Mad Max film is like, they don't tend to think of 1979 original. They think of The Road Warrior. This is where the franchise as we know it really begins. This is where Miller, blessed with an actual budget, takes a fairly conventional revenge thriller and turns it into a grand mythical saga of pure vehicular carnage. Just try to ignore how much of a massive arse the leading man became.
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Director Doug Liman and writers Tony Gilroy and William Blake Herron took the title of Robert Ludlum's 1980 espionage thriller and the basic concept (spy is fished out of the Mediterranean with nothing but amnesia and a Swiss bank account number) and ditched everything else. Instead they used Ludlum as a starting point to create their own modern take on Cold War thrillers that was so full of grounded spycraft and action it made the James Bond movies hang their heads down in shame. Liman even manages to fit in a little tribute to The Italian Job as Matt Damon's Bourne takes the wheel of Franka Potente's Mini Cooper and leads the police on a wild chase around Paris, but only after checking a map first to find the best escape routes. Alas, it does run out of energy by the time we get to the repeatedly reshot and reworked finale, one of the numerous production problems that saw Liman get replaced for the sequels.
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Mark Greig has been writing for Doux Reviews since 2011 More Mark Greig
I can't tell you how happy I am that you included To Live and Die in LA, one of my favourites, and, I'm fairly certain, the first film to feature a wrong-way-on-the-motorway car chase (it may have happened before, but I had never seen it, and it's certainly been done to death since).
ReplyDeleteI thought Ronin was actually pretty good — maybe 3 stars is right, though I think it's more like 3.5.
But only 3 stars for Bullitt? For shame! Steve buying groceries! Steve using his one-cup immersion heater! Steve being uncomfortable with maths! Steve in a Porsche 356C Cabriolet with Jacqueline Bisset! Steve telling it to The Man! Steve on the airport tarmac! Steve suffering introspection in his bathroom mirror! I mean, so much more than a car chase!
Anyway. Bullitt, my man. Bullitt.
On, and definitely The Bourne Identity. Awesome. Plus Moby on the closing credits. Didn't know about the problems with the ending, which I thought worked well.
I've only seen Mad Max 2 out of this list. Agreed on the main star being a butthead these days, but it is indeed a fun movie.
ReplyDelete