Ronin

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dda1996a
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Re: Ronin

#26 Post by dda1996a » Sun Oct 08, 2017 11:39 am

I think the movie starts fantastically in a sort of quiet Michael Mann vibe crime thriller (a la Heat) but the more the film focuses on its plot it loses ita steam. I still think this is a solid crime/action film but I agree with you

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domino harvey
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Re: Ronin

#27 Post by domino harvey » Fri Jul 17, 2020 2:09 am

jazzo wrote:
Fri May 12, 2017 1:55 pm
I know RONIN has its fans, and I haven't seen it since the theatrical release, but am I wrong in remembering that every second of this was terrible? I'm being serious. Upon re-watchings, my opinion on films evolve all the time, but I sincerely can't remember anything in this film that makes me think, oh maybe I was wrong.
I had seen this when it first came out and was non-plussed but after revisiting it tonight I am very glad to see skepticism like this. I too thought this was mediocre bordering on awful— a dumb script (sorry Mamet— I suspect he saved his best ideas for Heist) with every hoary action movie cliche you can think of and no particularly interesting action to distract us from ‘em. The car chases are sooooo not interesting, what the eff were critics at the time even on about? I also found the editing distractingly bad and a lot of scenes were hard to follow as a result. Only thing I really liked was the only thing I remembered (though I’d been wondering for years which heist movie it was from— I was thinking that one with Ed Norton and DeNiro!), the part where DeNiro shows up a not ready for prime time member of the squad by asking them to redraw a diagram from their plans on a white board

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colinr0380
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Re: Ronin

#28 Post by colinr0380 » Fri Jul 17, 2020 3:06 am

That reminds me to ask, I vaguely remember that he gets summarily dismissed in the film but was this that rare breed of film in which a character played by Sean Bean does not die?

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Re: Ronin

#29 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Fri Jul 17, 2020 3:09 am

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I was surprised/disappointed his character didn't play a larger part towards the end. Sort of weird for a guy who was already a villain in two major franchises by this point to be in and out of this
Last edited by flyonthewall2983 on Fri Jul 17, 2020 3:30 am, edited 1 time in total.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: Ronin

#30 Post by therewillbeblus » Fri Jul 17, 2020 3:21 am

I haven’t seen the film since it premiered on VHS, yet I still remember the opening car chase and final “twist” scenes vividly. I don’t remember a single thing about the body of the film though, but when even kid-me shrugged at it in the end, that’s enough of a red flag to stop me from revisiting this anytime soon.

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domino harvey
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Re: Ronin

#31 Post by domino harvey » Fri Jul 17, 2020 1:10 pm

colinr0380 wrote:
Fri Jul 17, 2020 3:06 am
That reminds me to ask, I vaguely remember that he gets summarily dismissed in the film but was this that rare breed of film in which a character played by Sean Bean does not die?
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He lives! But he’s threatened with death
flyonthewall2983 wrote:
Fri Jul 17, 2020 3:09 am
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I was surprised/disappointed his character didn't play a larger part towards the end. Sort of weird for a guy who was already a villain in two major franchises by this point to be in and out of this
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I think they got the same mileage out of subverting expectations as they did in that Segal movie where he dies 30 mins in. Plus the main idea is to contrast Skargard’s nerd with Bean’s tough guy to show via the coffee cup with each who is actually the real threat

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Reverend Drewcifer
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Re: Ronin

#32 Post by Reverend Drewcifer » Fri Jul 17, 2020 2:59 pm

Anthony Lane's review from 1998 opening line:

"As Robert De Niro stood up on the front seat of the speeding black Audi and poked the upper half of his body through the sunroof, the better to rest the rocket-launcher on his shoulder and aim it at the car in front, I arrived at the mature conclusion that Ronin was, all things considered, a rather enjoyable film."

I agree with every word of that statement except that it wasn't an Audi, but a 1976 Mercedes-Benz 450 SEL 6.9 W116, re: the rocket launcher.

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domino harvey
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Re: Ronin

#33 Post by domino harvey » Fri Jul 17, 2020 3:13 pm

That reminds me of one of the many, many idiot plot inclusions in the film wherein DeNiro has a picture of the car they're looking for cut out and placed within his travel guide... because it's hard to find a black car with that license plate from memory? This guy is supposed to be the greatest CIA spook of all time and he needs to leave evidence in his prop? Just one of the many, many, many times I felt my hand being held. It was almost as funny as Michael Lonsdale being sure to explain what seppiku was like twice, as though a man of the world like DeNiro wouldn't have heard of this most basic of concepts. Just straight up "We think the audience is stupid" writing

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Re: Ronin

#34 Post by Reverend Drewcifer » Fri Jul 17, 2020 3:14 pm

But Skipp Sudduth tho.

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Re: Ronin

#35 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Fri Jul 17, 2020 3:32 pm

De Niro and Jean Reno in something that makes better use of their talents and with more screen time together, would be quite welcome in my book.

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domino harvey
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Re: Ronin

#36 Post by domino harvey » Fri Jul 17, 2020 3:36 pm

For sure. Reno is usually enjoyable but he is really hobbled by his generic buddy buddy role here. It would have been better to give him something to do character-wise to take advantage of his colorful abilities. As is, it feels like the filmmakers cast the names they wanted and then didn’t bother to build on what they could do and bring

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Re: Ronin

#37 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Fri Jul 17, 2020 3:52 pm

I feel the same about this as I do for Luc Besson's The Family about De Niro and Tommy Lee Jones, which was a little more satisfactory in that they each played very basic typecast De Niro and Jones roles, but also played off each other too.

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Re: Ronin

#38 Post by colinr0380 » Sat Jul 18, 2020 7:50 am

"You think too hard”
“Nobody ever told me that before, but I wouldn’t go in there”

Inspired by domino I decided to pull out my 21 year old (!) MGM DVD of Ronin, complete with its generic player generated subtitles, and gave it another spin. I think I liked the film a bit more than domino did. It does seem affected to a bit of a fault for the first half, and a bit too in thrall to ‘cool’ characters doing ‘cool’ but at first inexplicable actions and treating each other with maximum ‘cool’ vibes (Natasha McElhone’s character at first seems to have an extraordinary superpower ability to be just six feet from the camera and the other characters and still be able to talk to the driver of a van or to her superior on the phone without us ever hearing what she is saying!) There is a lot of posturing going on here, though I concede that it could just be the normal stance of criminals! The viewer is kept very much at a distance from all the characters warily speaking to each other in blunt but coded terms about “the man from Bristol” and the “boat house at Hereford”, trying to feel each other out in the face of everyone having to play their cards constantly close to their chest. It can feel a bit like the much later Free Fire in that sense with the multi-national group of criminals doing something for some obscure reason feeling both an attempt at universality and less charitably an attempt to skirt around any potentially awkward political dimension (though there is an eventual twist to that aspect in Ronin where this over-obscure approaches to each other and the attempt at lack of politics is damningly critiqued as actually being the point, and shown to be impossible to be skirted around because all you are left with then are individual mercenary goals that swing to even greater extremes of behaviour). But that coolness melts a bit after the first half of the film once the events start to hit home more directly, we get faces put to bad guys, and the characters cannot maintain a professional sense of detachment from their actions. Ronin makes that wary and guarded initial section into a bit of a virtue and is actually trying to do something with that rag tag band of misfits being thrown together and having to gel themselves into a team, and is also suggesting a kind of mercenary callousness towards the relatively low wage job (which it seems initially was only going to make each member of the group $40,000 until De Niro’s character ups it to $100,000!) which only becomes more obvious during the first heist sequence with scores of innocent bystanders either mown down at their fruit and veg stand or only just getting out of the way of the high speed car chase through the narrow streets of Nice, before we get to every member of the group becoming complicit in cold bloodedly murdering their targets. And then everything twists to actually having a villain to track and the McGuffin being sold to the highest bidder regardless of political allegiance (“Everyone’s your brother until the rent comes due”). I particularly love in the final sequence of the film that we get three tiers of villains loosely representing political (Irish terrorist), national (the dreaded Russians) and personal (the psychopath just wanting his money) motivations, all double-crossing each other (natch!) that have to be systematically worked through to reach the prize!

I think more than the car stunts the really interesting aspect of the film is the interpersonal relationship one, with the De Niro character of Sam being the most capable and professional of all, asking questions that even the handler bridles at but not asking just to satisfy his curiosity or to score points in front of his colleagues (like the blustering Spence) but in order to cover all eventualities in the course of the job (“What’s in the case?” “That information is unnecessary” “Is it heavy? Is it explosive? Is it chained to some unlucky bloke’s wrist and we would have to chop it off?”). His character is the one constantly being shown as having it more together and eventually after the betrayal in the first heist he is the one to take over entirely and start building an effective team. The presence of Jean Reno also suggests this (as does the cafe coda scene amusingly!), but it is a kind of post-Mission: Impossible film too in that sense, just lower key and with more indiscriminate civilian deaths! (And I like that Sam immediately and perhaps too emotionally jumps to the conclusion that “the girl sold us out” which would make sense in a Mission: Impossible universe, but which is not entirely the case here!)

Over the course of the film as this ersatz gang falls apart through betrayal and double-crossing eventually the character’s pasts come back as something to fall back on in times of dire need (Sam's ‘high school colleague’ and Vincent’s French doctor friend able to help treat bullet wounds - “Do you think you could stitch me up on your own? If you don’t mind I’m going to pass out” - speak to this. Even Gregor's own past semi-friend does!) so all of our cut adrift masterless criminals end up returning (like the 47 Ronin) when they need help back to the organisations that had cruelly discarded them and their skills away to leave them roaming the world, scrounging around for piecemeal work that is beneath their talents just to survive. I suppose it is better to die in your organisation and for something than just as a mercenary left lying dead in the street with your throat cut and no one to mourn for you (or live as a conscienceless psychopath, as Gregor does). Maybe in the end it is a political film, but about what happens when politics dies and the blunt force of capitalism comes in to fill that gap, making it a post-Perestroika film even before the Russian element appears to solidify that sense. I especially like that eventually our main characters, in danger of being cast adrift from the situation after the second big battle sequence, use those older and previously wilfully neglected political/organisational/national aspects to turn things back around onto their enemies by using that aspect as the clue to track everyone down through the Russian connection that hired them!

I had forgotten just how star studded the cast was. Here’s Stellan Skarsgard lurking in the background and looking studious in glasses and sat in front of a bank of blinking lights and beeping computers as the techno-whizz (but who might be placing too much faith in technology over skill); oh look, over there is Jonathan Pryce sporting a not entirely convincing Irish accent. I particularly like the contrast between Skarsgard’s coffee cup reflexes and Sean Bean’s! I like that the Sean Bean character’s hotheaded impulsiveness and cocky overconfidence leading him into danger makes him kind of the equivalent of the Mifune character from Seven Samurai! With the suggestion in the “boathouse at Hereford” comment that De Niro has caught on that Bean’s character has probably completely bluffed about his credentials to just get that far into the job. Only in this world there is no room for an enthusiastic amateur to settle down and eventually prove himself and he gets summarily dismissed after endangering everyone and almost blowing the whole gig at the very first stage of buying guns in preparation for the actual hard part to come. (I particularly like before we get to that scene of being dismissed we have a number of contrasts that already underline the ineffectiveness of the Sean Bean Spence character, from Spence pointlessly spraying a semi-automatic weapon around set against Sam and Vincent doing more targeted single shots which actually bring the bad guys down. Their more targeted shooting skills come into play later on as well)

The immediate working man blue collar rapport between De Niro and Jean Reno’s characters is nice, suggesting that pure mercenary behaviour might be good for covering your trail, but a respectful working relationship is potentially even more fruitful in a tight situation and the thing that will actually ensure that you survive a hostile encounter. I kind of like the rough and too familiar handling of the McElhone character by Sam in the 'scoping out the hotel' sequence too which, as with the brusque treatment of Spence, shows that the tables have turned on who is in control of the situation for the first of what turns out to be many such twists.

It is also nice that the driver Larry talks about getting a Nitrous system into the getaway car a year or two before The Fast and the Furious made that more of a mainstream term, though for all of his car skills he does not end up participating in a few of the later car chases! Those much celebrated car chases did feel very impactful, taking place in the middle of heavily pedestrianised city streets as the cars weave in and out of traffic at top speed with no compunction about the safety of anyone else on the road, moving from narrow, tightly packed streets to Princess Diana-like tunnels (I bet it was uncomfortable to watch some of the chase scenes only a year after that event! Although these days ramming another car straight into a crowded outdoor pavement cafe is probably the moment with the more uncomfortable resonances) and through intersections, making people scatter in all directions. They are the kind of sequences where you need not just the two main cars to be stunt ones and maybe one or two stunt drivers in vehicles that crash, but a hundred or more cars all working in unison whilst also making it all look chaotic, haphazard and accidental. The big thing that Ronin has over most other car chases on film is both that sheer mass of stunt vehicles taking part in elaborate staging (which is exactly the kind of thing that would get replaced by CGI and held in an anonymous interchangeable looking highway in something like The Matrix Reloaded later on - although that anonymity is part of the point of that scene in Reloaded, taking the artificiality to callous excesses), but also because it is all taking place in 'real world' environments with innocent bystanders screaming and running in panic from the situation (If this had been a much less serious kind of film I would have loved to have had a moment in all of the carnage of one Citroën just gently rolling to a stop without any impact and then exploding into flames!) The car chase scenes themselves are heavily edited, so it is a lot of pieces of action rather than long fluid takes of all in one carnage, but this is a great example of how skillful editing and cross-cutting really builds the intensity of a scene more than otherwise might have been there. I never felt unclear about the action or where the characters were at in relation to each other, even when the film continually did cut aways to the small moments of destruction occurring in the wake of the high speed action. Especially good is the way that the lead car often causes incidents that the following cars then have to deal with, or not as the case may be!

Also: is there anything more beautiful than Natasha McElhone's hair blowing wildly in the wind as she drives in that final chase scene? Contrasted with De Niro's jerky and tense (but sharp and efficient) arm movements as he weaves the car back and forth through the same oncoming traffic.

I really like that putting innocent bystanders into cruel and unnecessary danger is a key theme to the criminal dealings throughout the film, not just the car chases! Even down to the climax! (Seriously, do these characters ever walk into any building without five minutes later causing everyone to run out screaming in terror, in fear of their lives and with gunshots ringing in their ears? It is also blackly comical just how many women and children that Gregor threatens to shoot throughout the course of the film! And I also casually wonder if the desperate rush of a crowd from either the coliseum or the stadium was any influence on that Ilya Naishuller music video!)

I also do really love that the film makes full use of the widescreen ratio, often piling in characters in the frame or having multiple planes of action. Not split-diopter as in De Palma, but there are always our main characters and the action going on around them (particularly on display in the hotel lobby photography sequence, where multiple planes of action is a key part of the sequence, but also there in the many car scenes or in the crowded seedy hotel rooms which always have other characters doing some bit of business elsewhere in the shot beyond the main action), which is a really nice touch. It also contrasts well with the more direct focus on the ice skating performance later in the film too (which instead gets intercut with simultaneous action rather than it taking place in the same shot, though there is a great ironic use of the TV screen paralleling the dressing room action!). There are always two or three things to pay attention to at any one time throughout this film, just as there are always two or three characters to keep in mind, and especially Sam usually has two or three actions playing out simultaneously also to mask his true intentions a little. I wonder if that is the Mamet influence on the storyline now that I am aware he had some input into it: the use of sleight of hand distracting tricks. It is a big ask of an audience member to keep abreast of everything going on but it has certainly grown on me much more revisiting it all these years later, so it may be one of those films that gets better with repeated viewings.

Oh, and I love just how much rampant graffiti is going on throughout this film! This isn't your prettified tourist postcard version of Paris, despite the view of the Eiffel Tower at night and the passing tourist boat on the Seine in that early 'cash for weapons' scene! And it was really amusing that the action stalls out (just before the final, biggest car chase of the film) because all of the characters are waiting for the (already delayed) post to get delivered! But if there had not been that delay there would never have been the opportunity to have caught up to the bad guys!
Last edited by colinr0380 on Sat Aug 08, 2020 4:38 pm, edited 13 times in total.

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Re: Ronin

#39 Post by colinr0380 » Sat Jul 18, 2020 10:44 am

Also I kind of love that brief moment of Jean Reno's Vincent chatting up the (male) security guard at the ice show for information and then getting De Niro's character to punch the guard out in a later scene rather than doing it himself because "I couldn't live with myself"! Considering this whole film is about a strong male friendship bond whilst every other relationship on display elsewhere spectacularly implodes when placed under pressure it is kind of interesting that Vincent gets his other 'love interest' to act like a spurned lover and punch out his 'rival' for him!
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Maybe that is reading too much into things! But I think it is what makes that final cafe scene so bittersweet too, as Sam is distracted by waiting for the woman who will never enter (and never really showed much interest in him beyond a quick snog anyway) whilst his best companion Vincent is right there for him but ignored, and eventually after Sam leaves with a "keep in touch" Vincent has to depart alone up those steps again all on his lonesome (accepting and moving on without his friend) as the end credits roll.

Does that make the bullet removal scene the equivalent of an intimate love scene? And do Vincent's final lines of "No questions, no answers. That's the business we're in." raise notions of "Don't ask, don't tell?"

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colinr0380
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Re: Ronin

#40 Post by colinr0380 » Mon Jul 20, 2020 11:27 am

I got a little bit obsessed with re-watching this film over the weekend (so sorry for spamming the thread with posts) to the extent of even Google mapping the location of the café and steps from the bookending opening and closing scenes. The steps are still there but the building has been demolished - going back in time it looks as if it was worse for wear, derelict and graffiti covered even back in 2008 (interesting to note that 'in reality' Sam probably would not have been able to skulk around the back of the building by walking behind the steps as he did in the opening scene, since there were lockable gates on the sides to prevent people from doing that!) and only got more graffitied over the years before then being torn down at some point between August 2014 and July 2016. So that is another location that has now transcended its physical existence to only appearing in film! It is a little melancholy to find that out (though maybe if I ever go to Paris I could still visit the stairs at least!), but I suppose that I will have to accept it and move on much as Vincent did at the end of the film!

Yes, this is my equivalent of a Summer holiday this year! (Although not really because of the Coronavirus situation - I mostly stay at home vicariously looking at foreign destinations through Google Maps in normal times as well!)

___
Regarding some of the criticisms of the film above, I can sympathise a bit but I think that the strengths of the film rather overwhelm any weaknesses. I think the chase scenes are excellent though I do have very slight issues with two moments in the big final chase: the truck moving on two wheels for a few feet before coming to rest is starting to get into 'stunts for their own sake' territory rather than just wanton destruction! (Though I think it is riding the line and held a moment longer it would become entirely absurd, but they just about get away with it with the shot running as long as it does); and the other moment is the one that jazzo mentioned earlier in the thread where after the cars leave the underground tunnel and are weaving through the traffic we get that slightly too long held wide shot of all of the other cars a little too calculatedly spaced out to leave enough gaps to weave through with a couple of drivers identically waving their fists out of their windows! That one shot arguably reveals the artificiality of the situation too much, which the otherwise tightly edited sequence and focus on quick sections of carnage helps to obscure in the rest of the action.

Whilst on the subject of the final car chase however I do absolutely love that little bit of business that goes on relating to the point at which the passengers in the car decide to put their seatbelts on. It is very amusing to note the different points at which Gregor in the first car and Vincent in the following one, after having already gone through some dangerous stunts, decide to put on their seatbelts in anticipation just before some particularly dangerous bit of driving occurs! (Gregor as the psychopath character is able to hold out for longer, but even his being made nervous and deciding to put his seatbelt on at a certain point was very funny!)

And I understand the above comments about the shoehorned in 'explanation of what ronin and seppuku means' scene, though while it is a bit heavy handed in explaining the underlying themes of the film overly directly both to the main character and the audience I still quite like it as its own little island of calm and safety before diving back into the outside world again. I get the impression that this is the filmmaker's (or perhaps more properly the screenwriter's?) most blatant way of paying homage to Le Samourai, though weirdly rather than the focus on the loner figure of that film and despite the Japanese titles linking them I think Ronin is perhaps closer in tone to other Melville films where tenuous gang allegiances fall apart (especially under generational frictions) such as Bob Le Flambeur or Le deuxieme souffle instead! Though Ronin is much less fatalistic about how events play out (at least for the main characters: everyone else is extremely expendable!), even if events similarly never go fully to plan due to deeply entrenched character flaws!

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Re: Ronin

#41 Post by therewillbeblus » Sat Oct 21, 2023 2:16 am

jazzo wrote:
Fri May 12, 2017 1:55 pm
I know RONIN has its fans, and I haven't seen it since the theatrical release, but am I wrong in remembering that every second of this was terrible? I'm being serious. Upon re-watchings, my opinion on films evolve all the time, but I sincerely can't remember anything in this film that makes me think, oh maybe I was wrong.
I felt this way around its release, and also never felt compelled to revisit until now, and... I kinda dug it? We begin with the makings of a sluggish heist flick, tired by dialogue composed of the groan-inducing crumbled papers apparently containing Mitch Hedberg-imitating zingers lying around Mamet's study. But then after a few comfortably-lame yet propulsive set pieces, recycled into familiar tropes and contrived narrative patches, and delivered with equal parts sincerity and a labile lethargic to half-energized attitude from competent filmmakers, this becomes camp. The strange economy and inconsistent energy and nebulous intentions behind the camera make this interesting as an odd duck at risk of passing for insipid. The car chases range from being well shot (but not conceived - I'm not sure anything here was really well set-up; it all feels very slapdash, with what works being a product of luck plus talent that can't really fuck up too bad) to a total mess, and the editing can be either gripping or alienating. The one where the chase goes in the reverse from traffic doesn't even try to make use of the friction inherent in the idea of going backwards on a highway. It just blows right by it, shooting footage from weird angles in a way that deflates suspense, and then triggers a cartoonish spring foil. I'm not expecting To Live and Die in L.A. or The Batman, but it's the conceit for establishing that set piece and spending all that money! There are many moments of awkward dialogue (which are much more pleasurable, if seen as camp) in De Nio's line readings of Mamet's dialogue - Though it's not any good to begin with, the delivery is so off-tone and careless, and the bits are shot so passively, that even if it was gold I don't think it'd have a chance at working.

And then there are times where events are taken very seriously by everyone and ample time is paid to the details: The self-surgery obviously, but there's a moment when Reno goes to get info on the cases, and you can tell from his miming interactions with the family, and their body language responses, just about the exact back and forth of shmoozing to get what he needed. It's far more thought-out than it needs to be - the camera doesn't even need to go or stay where it does for so long (but you couldn't give the same attention to the expensive chase?) Those were cool moments. Then there are others that play up the dramatic beats and overacting like a trashy 80s suspense movie trying to be nouvelle vague. We've got every clichéd exhibition of evil on display and overstated, unestablished side characters popping in and having laughable little quirks or exchanges of power, the notably-absent romantic sideplot (apparently excised from the film, because I never saw any evidence of it outside of a blink-or-you'll-miss it curio of unprompted sex) that leads to an unearned 'reveal', etc. So the schizophrenic effect works, but only because the movie's low energy just allows the change-ups to stay close to neutral, never venturing too far to call attention to how concerned or ambivalent the movie's own feelings towards itself are. It's really fun on those loose, good-bad terms.

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