Starring Robert De Nero, Jean Reno, Natascha McElhone, Stellan Skarsgard Sean Bean and Jonathan Pryce. Rated M.

A whinge first to get it out of the way. Jonathan Pryce is not Irish. So why the hell is he and his fake accent playing an Irish terrorist?

Apart from that, excellent. Ronin, we are told in big bold writing at the start, were disgraced Samurai warriors, roaming the earth, masterless, selling themselves as mercenaries. And so, we are spoon-fed the pretext on which the plot is based, but that's OK.

Sam (De Nero), Vincent (Reno), Gregor (Skarsgard) and Spence (Bean) are four such Ronin, hired by Dierdre (McElhone) to acquire a heavily guarded case from a well-organised group of men in black cars. They will be paid handsomely for their skills, with a big bonus on successfully completing the job.

What's in the case? That's strictly need to know -- and you don't. But, what ever it is, both the Irish terrorists and the Russian Mafia want it bad. The Irish can't afford the asking price so they hire the Ronin to take it, and the Russians, although they can afford it, would rather just take it anyway. Thus setting up a race to grab the goods which our 'heroes' are, of course, are more than capable of winning. At least most of them are.

The race for the case is a good excuse for director John Frankenheimer to bombard us with spectacle. The car-chase sequences are nothing short of spectacular. I even found myself rocking and rolling in my seat in time to every swing of the steering wheel. Ronin could possibly, in the fullness of time, go down as a classic car-chase movie on a par with Bullet and The Italian Job. I was, however, just a little taken aback when Mr Frankenheimer chose to take us through the same (or uncomfortably similar) Parisian tunnel that claimed Diana. Is nothing sacred?

The plot manages to take a twist or 10, in between chase sequences, that left my tiny brain almost as dizzy as the car chases left the rest of my head. De Nero is great anytime and well worth watching this time and, if you liked Reno in The Professional, well here's shades of the same.