Here's a strangely flawed and strangely satisfying movie. Directed by John Frankenheimer (The Manchurian Candidate, The Island Of Dr. Moreau), Ronin stars Robert DeNiro as part of a group of (apparent) former spies who, like the masterless samurai to whom the title refers, find themselves hungry for work in post-Cold War Europe. The group—which includes Stellan Skarsgård and Jean Reno, who looks distractingly like a Gallic Billy Joel—is recruited by The Truman Show's Natascha McElhone and the shadowy forces behind her, and given the relatively simple task of retrieving the undisclosed contents of a mysterious briefcase. From there, the story goes in about 11 labyrinthine directions at once, concealing two plot twists for every one it reveals. The film is co-written by David Mamet (under the pseudonym Richard Weisz), and, as with the less enjoyable Wag The Dog, it's not hard to spot his contributions. Alternating between action setpieces and dialogue-driven stretches of moody paranoia, Ronin creates an uneasy mixture of the two. Both halves work fine on their own, however. A car chase through Nice's fruit-and-fishcart district is as unexpectedly exciting as it is cliched, but Mamet's emphasis on detail sets Ronin apart from lesser spy thrillers. An early subplot involving a member of the group who's not what he seems is set up so expertly that it's not even clear what's being done until it becomes crystal-clear. Although the film's halves do battle a few times too often for Ronin to be the great movie it could have been, it's still a fine, well-acted thriller that's as slick as it is thoughtful, even if it never quite finds a balance between the two.