Runtime: 102 minutes
Directed by: Russell Mulcahy
Starring: Denzel Washington, John Lithgow, Ice-T, Kevin Pollak, Lindsay Wagner
From: Warner Bros./HBO
It was yet another messageboard discussion that spurned me to finally tackle this movie again. It had only been watched by me a few years before I joined Letterboxd; the reason why it took so long will be revealed at the end. Someone mentioned they saw a JoBlo video on YouTube yesterday devoted to how underrated & entertaining that piece of sleazy 90's trash was. This user mentioned they were unfamiliar w/ it; me and others praised it. This gave me the push to praise the movie here.
Yes, this is incredibly sleazy & trashy despite starring both Denzel Washington and John Lithgow. The former is a neophyte cop teamed w/ Kevin Pollak; Denzel arrests Lithgow's insane Earl Talbot Blake after the hitman double-crosses some drug dealers. Unfortunately for Denzel's Nick Styles, Blake is an intelligent psychopath so after an escape, he engineers a rather improbable yet still memorable plot of revenge where he attempts to ruin his life.
The movie's from Russell Mulcahy, Joel Silver and Stephen E. de Souza; they gave us a picture featuring such plot points as child porn & the Aryan Brotherhood! If you think that wasn't outrageous enough, wait until you hear some of the dialogue. Blake telling a prison guard he flosses “with your wife's pubic hair” is mild compared to some phrases way too vulgar to mention here. Believe it or not, the opening credits will remind you of Saul Bass and Alan Silvestri's score will “remind” you of Bernard Herrmann; as the ending was totally Hitchcock, this was not designed by happenstance.
Slick direction and a talented cast (including Ice-T, John Amos, Lindsay Wagner, and Mary Ellen Trainor as Gail Wallens. Yes, she reprises her reporter character from Die Hard, meaning Ricochet is part of that universe) helped make this at times graphically gory picture compelling. Naturally, Denzel was great as a likable cop turned assistant DA w/ a nice wife and two young daughters, while Lithgow was The Joker-to echo multiple Letterboxd reviews-and was unforgettable as a madman. The movie did not do great at the box office, probably due to the rather similar Cape Fear remake releasing shortly thereafter. However, at least people can now watch it at home, but...
The reason why this was never reviewed by me before: probably due to nebulous rights issues due to its being made by HBO Pictures back when they tried the theatrical game, it has never entered the HD era except for a showing on Cinemax long ago that someone ripped (that is how I watched it last night, via “the bowels of the Internet”) where aside from the credits it is in the wrong aspect ratio. I understand this same version is the one currently on MAX. Hope was held for years that even digitally, a better copy would pop up. As it may never happen or at the very least I'd have even more gray hair if it ever does happen, last night felt like the right time to finally view this again.
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