Playing-yourself nominees include Roy Firestone, Drew Bledsoe, Troy Aikman, Al Michaels, Katarina Witt, Mel Kiper and the broadcast team. Aikman and Witt receive explicit preferences; Aikman's support for Jerry is clarified as moral support rather than signing with him.
Katarina Witt wins in one host's heart, but he does not want to give her the honor and leans to Frankenheimer instead.
An unattributed voice hedges 'either Frankenheimer or Mamet'; De Niro is called really good but not great, showing up and doing his job in an era of four movies a year rather than giving a Neil McCauley-level performance.
The second voice agrees it is Frankenheimer: arguably his best movie, inconceivable in the mid-90s, closer to Grand Prix than The Manchurian Candidate, showing his range and reliable genre filmmaking.
How did Katarina Witt's character end up with such an ugly boyfriend or husband? Roman Abramovich's girlfriend is cited as a comparison.
Who won the career battle, Katarina Witt or De Niro, and McElhone or Famke Janssen? It was market corrections back and forth.
McElhone and Janssen could each have taken the other's roles in Rounders, X-Men, Taken or Californication; a third actress on that corner is described but not named, and Eva Green and Olga Kurylenko are ruled out.
The hosts wonder whether McElhone and Janssen like each other, and call it a good Ringer piece.
When has De Niro convincingly thrown anything? Raging Bull is set aside, Godfather 2, Midnight Run, Cape Fear and Goodfellas are debated, and The Irishman's beating scene is the funniest.
Keanu and Swayze look like real football players in Point Break, unlike De Niro; he gets chased down by Pacino at the end, and The Fan is another example.
What was in the briefcase? Best guess is nuclear codes or plutonium, with the Russians wanting it at the fringe of the Cold War and Seamus able to blow up the peace process.
Why De Niro and Deirdre suddenly become attracted is questioned again.
Witt should have played herself, since assassinating the real Katarina Witt would be a bigger international incident.
The skating performance runs impossibly long while the heroes get through security, joked as a 25-minute routine to Free Bird or Hotel California with the sniper growing impatient.
French law enforcement barely reacts to a countrywide crime spree, ravaged bistros and car chases; after the wrong-way highway chase and crash there are no cops.
Stellan Skarsgård is at Apex, with this and Good Will Hunting in the same year and Deep Blue Sea the next; this is called peak Stellan and a great call.
Katarina Witt is not at Apex; hers was on the medal stand.
Frankenheimer's apex is The Manchurian Candidate.
Jean Reno's apex is The Professional; De Niro is not at Apex.
McElhone's apex is suggested as Californication.
Whether this is Apex Mountain for mysterious-switched-suitcase movies gets 'might be', then 'Yeah, I think it is', and ends at 'I think it's in the mix'.
It is 'absolutely' Apex for late-1990s France movies, and Apex Mountain for Nice.
Sean Bean is listed for the Dion Waiters award and could change the award's name.
Katarina Witt is floated out of affection, then conceded ('You're right').
Bean's short run is recounted: walking the team into an ambush, wild machine-gun fire, the 'bit of raspberry jam' line, throwing up, and De Niro's cup-of-coffee ambush leading to the boathouse-at-Hereford exchange.
Bean could change the award's name, and winning both awards is compared to winning MVP and Rookie of the Year.
Whether Katarina Witt belongs in the Joey Pants award or Who Won the Movie is deferred.
Sudduth's part suits a late-1990s up-and-comer, so Ben Affleck is proposed, filming before Good Will Hunting broke when he had Chasing Amy and Mallrats.
Sudduth is recalled from TV, possibly as a precinct captain on a Chicago show.
Colin Farrell would have been too early for the part but is answered 'that would have been cool'; he could maybe also have done the Sean Bean part.
Katarina Witt; McElhone's accent and outfits; De Niro's case-photo setup; slow-building first 40 minutes; self-operation scene; wrong-people realization; the 'any doubt' lessons; gritty French locations; shifting stakes
Katarina Witt is the first pick: a host loved her and calls her the best-looking female athlete of his first 20 years, joking she could be a Bond villain.
Witt, an iconic gold-medal skater, turns up playing a gold-medal figure skater with barely a line.
McElhone's Irish accent is praised though she is from England, and her baggy-jeans outfits are back in style.
De Niro handing a stranger his camera to photograph the case, then studying the photos, is a favorite setup.
The first shootout into the first chase is only borderline, liked mainly for Sean Bean going for it, with Bean floated for the Dion Waiters or Vincent Hanna award and compared to a reality-show villain.
The first 40 minutes build and build.
The makeshift self-surgery to remove a bullet is a favorite action trope; other examples named are Heat, First Blood, Master and Commander (called the all-timer), Cast Away and John Wick, while The Fugitive does not count because he is a doctor.
The realization that only the Russians could have produced the second case, 'we're following the wrong people', is a nice swerve an hour in.
The lessons 'whenever there is any doubt, there is no doubt', 'that's the second thing they teach you' and 'no questions, no answers' are praised; a host says he should have adopted the first for Grantland.
The grey, gritty, chilly south of France locations are praised.
The movie changes from a guys-on-a-mission film to international intrigue to a cat-and-mouse game with De Niro, Deirdre and Mickey.
Whether the MacGuffin aged well is left undecided, joked as a new 'what's aged the I don't know' category: it felt like a Pulp Fiction ripoff, but Sam's reveal that he was there for Seamus makes it work.
The first shootout is left off as merely fine; the list opens with De Niro turning on Sean Bean's character, demanding he draw the diagram again and asking the color of the boathouse, before Bean's character is paid off and dismissed.
De Niro snapping and getting in someone's face is a favorite De Niro mode.
The first big shootout and chase is shot on location; De Niro shooting evokes Neil McCauley, and a host suggests that had McCauley escaped LAX he would become this character, a thought saved for unanswerable questions.
Jean Reno's driving faces and cars crashing through an outdoor bistro, with people scrambling, make it a how-did-they-do-that scene.
The film is defined by how many innocent bystanders get killed, unlike action movies' usual invisible rules; the hosts approve, citing a Speed comparison and the motorcycle rider being wiped out.
Low car-mounted cameras, wide shots and narrow streets make the chase feel car-sick real; the first Bourne movie borrows it, and a host quotes Frankenheimer's DVD commentary that violence does not happen in slow motion.
The switched-case gimmick is a favorite action trope; Gregor is sneaky, De Niro spots the switch from paint on his jacket, and Focus is mentioned for its bag switching.
In the playground scene Gregor nearly shoots a child to make a point until the Russian moves his gun, and Sam's meeting with his handler ('Do I know you?') is also cool.
The amphitheater scene and the France footage in general are praised, including realistic tourist crowds at landmarks.
The second chase is called the more legendary one: McElhone's character drives, Gregor quietly putting on his seatbelt minutes in is the funniest moment, and the wrong-way highway driving looks real and storyboarded, not CGI; it is named as the favorite.
The Katarina Witt figure-skating countdown ends with her boyfriend and then her being shot, a tense scene.
The final coffee scene, De Niro in a sling, has a Midnight Run goodbye feel; the hosts say an alternate ending had the IRA grab McElhone's character, that test audiences hated it while Frankenheimer preferred it, and one host calls cutting it a mistake.
Asked for a favorite, the answer is the second chase, one of the best car chases ever filmed, with added praise for the warehouse banter ('labor or management'), the French tavern meeting, and the post-skating crowd chase and MacGuffin reveal.
