It's got DeNiro and Jean Reno, that's all I needed to hear, but the cool casting went on and on. Even though ISLAND OF DR MOREAU sucked terribly, this director once made brilliant films like MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE, so you never can tell when he'll bite ya on the ass and make you go, "WOW!"
As an L.A. film school student, my colleagues and I got to attend a private advanced screening of the new DeNiro film, "Ronin". Afterwards, we had a Q & A session with the film's Director, John Frankenheimer.
First of all, the movie was great. It was well written, had a great cast and the car chase scenes were unparalleled. When I say the car chases are "unparalleled", I mean it! They will leave you completely breathless (rivals the French Connection)! I was very impressed with the solid script, even before Frankenheimer told us candidly that David Mammet himself is responsible for majority of the rewrites. The story is complex and unpredictable enough to hold you intrest and contains, not one, but THREE ex-villians from the James Bond films!
The obvious and more recent ones are Jonathan Price (Tomorrow Never Dies) and Sean Bean (Goldeneye). The third, I almost completely missed. It was "Drax" from Moonraker. He's aged and gained some weight, so keep an eye out for him.
The main complaints I have with the film is the characters' dialects. There are such a variety of accents (Russian, French, Irish, Cockney), that most of them take a while to get used to and for a while, they are very hard to understand. That doesn't help at the beginning of the film because things are slow and take a while to kick in. Don't expect to know exactly what's happening through the first 30 minutes of the film. You won't learn much about the characters until about halfway through the film. Just be patient, it'll eventually come out (some of it at least).
From what the director told us, he shot about seven alternate endings, and the one they showed us was the most satisfying. It wasn't quite satisfying enough for my taste, but you have to realize that this ISN'T a standard "Hollywood" movie. The good guys don't always have to be "good"! John Frankenheimer was a suprisingly confident man (maybe a little pompous?) and just a little critical (maybe a little bitter?) of his experiences in the biz, but he had some interesting things to say about some of the actors he's directed. His favorites were: Burt Lancaster, Marlon Brando, Gary Sinese and Robert DeNiro (although, he really trashed Val Kilmer in Dr. Moreau).
I for one am a big fan of his and look forward to seeing him direct more features rather than the made-for-cable movies he's been doing. Well, that's my two cents.
Call me Smythee
