7. Ronin (1998)
Though John Frankenhiemer helmed some of the most politically charged thrillers of the 60's like the The Manchurian Candidate and Seven Days in May, he never quite regained the acclaim from his hey-day with some of his 80's and 90's films, like the terrible The Island of Dr. Moreau. He made a minor come-back with a TV biopic on controversial George Wallace and came all the way back into his old game with Ronin. With a tremendous ensemble cast including Robert De Niro, Jean Reno, Stellan Skarsgard and Natasha McElhone this espionage thriller takes the genre and deconstructs it to the most basic elements: group A has to get a Macguffin from group B. In this case, the Macguffin is a mysterious suit-case that is being thrown from spy to spy. In the vein of Goldeneye, with the cloak and dagger operations taking place in the post-Cold War landscape, the term Ronin refers to warriors without masters or wars to fight for. In retrospect, given the number of civilian casualities and amount of collateral damage, including some of the most spectacular car chases/wrecks in cinema history that the "Ronin" inflicted on Western Europe perhaps the Cold War wasn't all that bad.