I’ve been reviewing films for The Leader for coming up on three years now, yet somehow I’ve never submitted a review of director John Frankenheimer’s 1998 spy caper “Ronin” to the paper.

The 1990s represented a renaissance of the auteur style of filmmaking that had so thoroughly dominated the 1960s and ‘70s, so it’s only appropriate that the decade would afford a comeback to the director who made his name with social commentary dramas and politically tinged thrillers such as 1962’s “Birdman of Alcatraz” and “The Manchurian Candidate,” 1964’s “Seven Days in May” and 1977’s “Black Sunday.”

There was one big difference between the 1990s and the 1960s and ‘70s, though, as Saturday Night Live’s resident metalheads Wayne and Garth (played by Mike Myers and Dana Carvey) observed not long after the fall of the Berlin Wall, when they only half-jokingly opined, “Spy stuff in the future is gonna suck! Who’s James Bond gonna fight, the Libyans?”

This lament was arguably justified, because the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union had indeed yielded a gold mine of material for the spy genre of storytelling, to the extent that even otherwise sober political scientists such as Francis Fukuyama sulkily deemed the Cold War’s close to be “The End of History,” as per the title of his 1992 book.

And while talented directors like Tony Scott were able to get some mileage out of teasing the Russian bear’s return, with his well-crafted 1995 submarine film “Crimson Tide” — also recommended, simply for the exemplary performances by Denzel Washington, Gene Hackman, Viggo Mortensen and James Gandolfini — nobody seemed to know how to make the spy genre work in a post-Cold War world.

That is, until “Ronin,” which not only acknowledged the contemporary global political reality, but weaponized it by depicting a world in which all the secret agents appear to have been laid off by their respective governments, so they’re forced to freelance for independent parties, hiring out their hard-earned talents to the highest bidders.

Our film opens in France, with a terse Irish field leader named Deirdre (Natascha McElhone) rounding up an international crew of mostly veteran mercenaries. Larry (Skipp Sudduth) is the meat-and-potatoes American driver. Spence (Sean Bean) is the tense, twitchy Englishman who boasts loudly of his experiences in the British Special Air Service. Gregor (Stellan Skarsgård) is the cagey, calculating German computer specialist formerly associated with the KGB. And Vincent (Jean Reno) is the playfully savvy French gunman who forges a genuine friendship with the eagle-eyed Sam (Robert De Niro), whose past with the CIA has left him taking nothing for granted.

The team’s mission is to retrieve a briefcase from a well-armed group in transit through France, which will, of course, require high-speed car chases and heavy exchanges of gunfire. But even before the action ramps up in earnest, the benefit of having David Mamet co-write your screenplay is that it becomes a character study of all the myriad varieties of competitive masculinity, especially when your starting premise tasks a bunch of would-be tough guys with impressing a poker-faced woman boss.

Everyone’s acting is flawless and full of subtle touches that reward repeat viewings, and in the same decade that rightly praised Quentin Tarantino for the clever, catchy dialogue he crafted for low-rent hoodlum characters, Mamet demonstrates why he’s the master by delivering lines so good they don’t just sing, they SLAP.

I could have watched an entire stage play devoted to our team scheming in their hideout, with Spence’s insecure bragging finally provoking the previously soft-spoken Sam, at the same time Sam, without ever raising his voice, browbeats Deirdre into renegotiating more favorable contracts for the team, all while repeatedly nagging her with the question, “What’s in the case?”

Fortunately, because this is John Frankenheimer, director of 1966’s “Grand Prix,” we’re treated to some of the best car chases ever set to film — and yes, I recognize that is a bold statement in a world in which “Bullitt” (1968) and “The French Connection” (1971) exist.

It’s not spoiling anything for anyone who knows anything about heist capers to reveal that, as per the wisdom of Sun Tzu, our team’s plan goes sideways at first contact with the enemy. But it’s fascinating nonetheless to watch all the players take on the splintering trajectory of billiard balls after the break, each racing toward the covert goals they’d harbored all along.

Look for appearances by Jonathan Pryce as Deirdre’s less-than-sanguine boss, Seamus, plus real-life Olympic ice-skater Katarina Witt, executing a typically impressive routine during a key scene, and my favorite cameo, Michael Lonsdale as Jean-Pierre, whose character serves as a rare example of someone who managed to successfully retire from the rat race of the spy games.

James Bond aficionados will recognize Lonsdale as Hugo Drax, the arch-villain in 1979’s “Moonraker,” and his brief conversation with De Niro’s Sam spells out the meaning of the film’s title, since we see that the end of the Cold War has reduced these secret agents to masterless samurai, disavowed by the very same nations for whom they committed so many terrible deeds.

In its own way, “Ronin” argues against Fukuyama’s “End of History” by showing us that, even in a world without a Cold War, there will never be any shortage of international intrigue.

A bit of wisdom from Leto Atreides II, in Frank Herbert’s “Children of Dune,” that is just as applicable to that era as it is to the present day, is that there is always a crucible for humanity to pass through, but we’ll come out the other side, because we always arise from our own ashes. Everything returns later, albeit in changed forms.