Sean Bean's fearless and heroic turn in
'Sharpe' made it one of my all-time favourite TV shows. The first thing he did after it ended was 1998's
'Ronin', so I was pretty excited when I rented it from the video store and remember being really disappointed to discover that he plays a cowardly ass-hat, who is only in the film for about 10-minutes. 20-years later and the Arrow 4K restored blu-ray in hand, it's time to put my Sean Bean fanboy mentality aside and give 'Ronin' another go...
Ronin (1998)
The convoluted infinity-cross MacGuffin plot exists just to hold up the 3 or 4 lengthy car chases, which are rightly considered some of the best ever shot. No CGI was needed back in a bygone film-making era when you had stunt-drivers as skilled as this, hundreds of cars to crash and stunt-people who look like they were ready to break a few bones. Unfortunately the irrelevant stakes do inevitably make things drag when the runtime is over 2-hours. Only
Robert De Niro and
Jean Reno's bromance has any real heart.