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[MOVIE] RONIN

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For those of you who haven't seen the movie RONIN, go and see it.. I just
got back from the theatres.&nbsp; It's basically an OK movie, but the car
chase scenes are absolutely INCREDIBLE.&nbsp; Wow... I've never seen
anything like it.&nbsp; And, for your listening pleasure, I scanned Brock
Yates' article about it in this month's Car &amp; Driver.&nbsp;
Enjoy.&nbsp; Oh, and PS, for those of you who saw the movie and are
tempted to have one of those *beautiful* Mercedes 6.9 sedans (did you
hear that exhaust note?!) I have one for sale... cheap!<br>
 And, by the way, the Citroen he refers to is an XM. Way cool scenes, you
have to see this... and the best part?&nbsp; I saw it for $3 cause the
movie's playing in the bargain theatre by me! Woohoo! :)<br>
<br>
<font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=1>Some of the proudest moments
during my generally dismal career came while writing two screenplays for
the legendary director John Frankenheimer. Neither made it to the screen,
based on weird machinations in the movie industry I won't bore you with
here. One was to be Frankenheimer's sequel to his much-celebrated 1966
movie, <i>Grand Prix</i> -- generally acknowledged to be the best
motor-racing motion picture of all time. My screenplay that never got
made was called <i>Endurance. </i>The story involved a pair of drivers: a
ballsy, Robby Gordon type suffering from night blindness and a
proto-feminist beauty, who team up with a combination Andy Evans/Ralph
Lauren-style egomaniac to win Le Mans. <i>Endurance </i>died with the
bankruptcy of Cannon Films arid the box-office tank job committed by Torn
Cruise and <i>Days of Tirooder, </i>which put a bullet in all racing
projects for five years.<br>
That said, Frankenheimer is back in action, so to speak, with a new
adventure-suspense picture called <i>Ronin, </i>starring Robert DeNiro.
Set in Paris and the south of France, it features the finest real-life
(nondigital compositing) car-chase action ever shot, surpassing the
former highwater marks filmed in <i>Rullitt </i>(1968) and <i>The French
Connection </i>(1971). Frankenheimer, with star stunt driver Jean-Claude
Lagniez, and stunt coordinator Joe Dunne choreographing the sequences in
Paris and in the old section of Nice, have produced truly unbelievable
footage. The vehicles employed&nbsp; (and wrecked) included an Audi A8, a
BMW M5, a Citroen. a Peugeot, and a 6.9 Mercedes-Benz. (I hope the latter
was not the director's own muscle-bound Lorinser-modified 6.9 that lurks
around Beverly Hills with a nitrous-oxide bottle concealed in the trunk.)
You must see this movie.<br>
<br>
Reprinted WITHOUT permission from Car &amp; Driver, 11/98 Vol. 44 No. 5
p. 21. Copyright (c) 1998&nbsp; Hachette Filipacci Magazines.</font>
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