Test Screening Review of RONIN by Kagemusha

Here's a look at RONIN, I'm currently looking for additional reviews for the film, since we just got the one... well that means ya have to take it with a grain of salt. Kagemusha has been a good spy in the past, but hold off putting any wieght to the review till we have a good fair number of them.

Greetings once again, my shogun. It is appropriate that I, Kagemusha, am able to give you a review of John Frankenheimer's RONIN over two months early. The film test-screened Thursday night at the UA La Canada (actually, there's a tilde over the "n," but good luck figuring out how to do that) a bit northeast of Hollywood.

Simply put, the film is remarkably good. It's smart, for one thing, and knows when to show a little restraint. The acting is, as you might expect, top-notch. Even Katarina Witt, looking eerily like Alanis Morissette, shows up briefly without embarrassing herself. An impromptu surgery scene is written with intelligence and amusing attention to character detail; it shows very little but looks like it might have hurt a whole hell of a lot.

Where Frankenheimer sets aside his self-restraint and lets the action go through the roof is in not one but two spectacular car chases and an automotive escape scene to boot. This is, without a doubt, some of the best car chase footage ever shot, right up there with the amazing chase sequences in William Friedkin's THE FRENCH CONNECTION and TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A. The second major chase earned applause from the test screening audience. Some even cheered.

But now here lies the problem, my shogun: Some glorified chimps in the audience left the theater muttering "too long" and "didn't understand it." These are the kind of mouth-breathing troglodytes who send Joe Hallenbeck into a near-genocidal rage, and for once I agree with him. I saw one woman complaining that the denouement of the film was insufficiently expository...well, okay, perhaps she didn't put it exactly like that, but then, she was almost two full thirds buttock. So I hope the producers will give due weight to the high percentage of viewers who gave RONIN "excellent" ratings. If not, we can look forward to Robert De Niro in what amounts to an eighty-minute SPEED RACER: THE MOVIE on October second.

Until next time, my shogun, I pray only continued blessings on the house of Ain't It Cool. Be well, sir.