“Staff Picks” is a deeper look into movies that we love here at Video CULTure. Each edition of this column will focus on a single film that we think you should check out, either for the first time or for a long-overdue revisit.
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By Matthew Essary (Twitter: @WheelsCritic)
Growing up in a time before streaming services was hard for someone who loved movies. You had to put in work to see things. Video store hunts, pouring over the latest copy of “TV Guide” trying to figure out when something you wanted to see would be on, and waiting several months to finally see a film that you had only vaguely heard about from friends. These are all things that you had to deal with.
There was also though the pleasure and frustration of unintentional discovery. Sometimes, you would be flipping through the channels and land on something that caught your eye. If you didn’t have that aforementioned “TV Guide”, you might have no idea what it was because you missed a chunk of it at the beginning. It was possible to get wrapped up in a film without knowing its title or even all of the story. The fragment of what you saw would stick with you and it would be a topic that would get brought up occasionally usually in the context of, “man, I saw this crazy movie once. I wish I knew what it was called”. Then you badly recount some moment from the movie and no one would have any idea what you were talking about.
RICOCHET, for years, was that movie for me.
This slice of sleazy, pulp insanity stars a young Denzel Washington, who after big successes in GLORY and MO’ BETTER BLUES was beginning to solidify his position as a leading man. Here he plays a beat cop named “Nick Styles” who, during his patrol of a local carnival, ends up in a stand-off with a psychotic killer who was trying to flee the scene of a crime. That killer is “Earl Talbot Blake”, played by John Lithgow (THE ADVENTURES OF BUCKAROO BANZAI…). The stand-off ends with Blake disarmed and shot in the knee and Styles as a local hero after the entire conflict was caught on video.
Blake is then sent to prison and Styles goes on to a successful career that includes eventually becoming an Assistant District Attorney for the city. Styles leads his fairy-tale life as a hero and a respected public figure, forgetting all about the man he encountered that kickstarted his career. Earl Talbot Blake never forgot about Styles though. He spent years plotting an escape from prison and a plan to destroy the man that put him there.
So after a daring and violent escape from lock up, Blake fakes his own death and begins a “cat and mouse” game where the end result is to not only discredit Styles but to destroy his idyllic life as well.
RICOCHET is not a movie that believes in subtlety. Directed by former music video maverick Russell Mulcahy (HIGHLANDER), it is a neo-noir film for the garish MTV generation. Everything is shot in a stylized manner with deep shadows, stark lighting, and dynamic camera movements. It’s not just the look of the film that is ratcheted up though. Everything is played broad to almost cartoonish levels. For example, when Blake is introduced to his heavily tattooed, gargantuan cell-mate, played by former wrestler Jesse Ventura (PREDATOR), he knocks the larger man out right away with barely any effort and calls him a “cream puff” for good measure.
What happens next is the scene that was playing when I first stumbled upon RICOCHET as a kid flipping through cable TV channels and it is so outlandish that it was seared into my brain for years after seeing it.
The film then jumps to them settling their differences in the prison cafeteria after hours in what at first appears to be a standard “no holds barred” fight scenario but is quickly revealed to be something much more drastic. They get phone books and stacks of newspapers strapped to their bodies like make-shift samurai armor. They are then handed sword-length metal poles that have been sharpened on the ends into giant “shivs” (i.e. prison knives). Then they proceed to have a sword fight like some sort of white trash homage to Kurosawa movies. I’m not joking.
Mulcahy must have known how silly this all was because he shoots the scene in the exact same manner as the climatic duel in HIGHLANDER. Again, I’m serious. The lighting, the camera positioning, and the sparking weapons are all cheekily lifted from that earlier film. For years, I tried to find anyone else who had seen this “crazy action movie where the dad from HARRY AND THE HENDERSONS sword fought the ‘sexual tyrannosaurus’ from PREDATOR”.
My friends thought I was nuts. I mean, how is that a real thing that happened? It didn’t help my case when I tried to explain other scenes from the film, like where Washington’s Nick Styles, after becoming a lawyer, threatens the local drug dealers, led by his childhood friend (played by Ice-T, TRESPASS), with a fake grenade to bluff them into steering clear of the local youth center. They definitely thought I was joking when I explained that part of Blake’s master plan to destroy Styles was to get him high and have a prostitute give him Gonorrhea.
It sounds insane, right?
There are so many deeply weird and sleazy moments in RICOCHET that it’s hard to not just spoil them all. I haven’t even touched on how Lithgow’s Blake terrorizes Styles’s children with a hatchet… and a fake birthday. I haven’t brought up that Kevin Pollock (THE USUAL SUSPECTS) is in this as Styles’s old cop buddy and even does a “Captain Kirk” impression at one point for no discernible reason. These are just a few things that happen in this film that make it unlike any other 90s action film. It’s unhinged, rapidly paced, and immensely enjoyable if you give yourself over to where it wants to take you.
RICOCHET was originally conceived to be an entry in the DIRTY HARRY series by its writers Fred Dekker (THE MONSTER SQUAD) and Menno Meyjes (THE COLOR PURPLE) but was rejected for being too dark and violent (let that thought sink in for a moment). It was then reworked into an original property by Steven E. de Souza (DIE HARD) and almost starred Kurt Russell (EXECUTIVE DECISION) before ending up with Russel Mulcahy, Denzel Washington, and John Lithgow under legendary producer Joel Silver (THE LAST BOY SCOUT).
It’s hard to imagine any alternate version of RICOCHET being as fun as the one we ultimately ended up with though. Russell Mulcahy’s direction is vibrant. Denzel Washington is a blast to watch as you can clearly see him taking the first steps into being the massive mainstream movie star he would later become. Truly the real joy of the film however is Lithgow’s all-time great villain performance as Earl Talbot Blake. He is simultaneously ridiculous and chilling all at once. He has almost nothing but great line deliveries throughout the film as well. I’m convinced the only reason that his dialogue from this isn’t ingrained in geek film culture is that it’s all just too hilariously vulgar to repeat out of context. He is clearly having such a good time being dastardly that it just elevates the whole thing even further. When both actors square off in the film’s climax it’s electric …both figuratively and literally.
So yeah, RICOCHET is a film that I have loved for decades. It was a huge relief when it hit DVD in the early days of the format so I could confirm to myself and my friends that I had not just imagined the whole crazy thing. Now, it’s even available to stream in high definition at the click of a button. You guys don’t know how good you have it. So do yourself a favor, start up RICOCHET on your streaming device of choice and settle in for the craziest piece of 90s mainstream action cinema you will ever see!
To find out where this film is available to stream, click here: Just Watch