Ricochet (1991 film)
| Ricochet | |
|---|---|
 The movie poster for Ricochet. | |
| Directed by | Russell Mulcahy |
| Written by | Fred Dekker Menno Meyjes Steven E. de Souza |
| Produced by | Michael Levy Joel Silver |
| Starring | Denzel Washington John Lithgow |
| Music by | Alan Silvestri |
| Distributed by | Warner Bros. Pictures |
Release date | October 4 1991 |
Running time | 109 min. |
| Language | English |
Ricochet is a 1991 crime-thriller film, directed by Russell Mulcahy and starring Denzel Washington, John Lithgow, Ice-T, Kevin Pollack, and Lindsay Wagner.
Plot
Template:Spoiler The film begins in 1984, depicting Washington as Nicholas Styles, a rookie officer of the Los Angeles Police Department and law student. The young Styles is witnessing the beginning of his career and adult life, as he meets his future wife (played by Victoria Dillard) and is drifting away his childhood friend, Odessa (Ice-T), who is drifting into a life of crime in South Central Los Angeles, where the two of them grew up.
One evening, while Styles and his partner Larry Doyle (Pollack) are patrolling a carnival, they intervene and block the escape of a vicious organized-crime hitman, Earl Talbot Blake (Lithgow), and his servile accomplice Kim, shortly after Blake has murdered several drug dealers and stolen drugs. Styles catches Blake at gunpoint in the carnival, and is forced into a standoff when Blake takes a hostage at gunpoint, using her as a human shield. Styles manages to get Blake to release the hostage by stripping his equipment and uniform off, demonstrating that he has no other weapons or body armor, before placing his revolver on the ground. He has stripped, however, to gain access to a backup gun hidden in his athletic supporter, which he uses to shoot Blake in the knee, allowing him to take the killer down. The incident is caught by an amateur videographer, and is shown on television, making Styles a local hero and drawing the welcome attention of the Los Angeles County District Attorney (Wagner) and a local councilman (John Cothran, Jr.). He and Doyle are immediately promoted to Detective, while Blake is sent to prison.
The film cuts ahead seven years to 1991. Styles has since had a famous and eventful career in the Police Department, has gone on to further fame and success as an Assistant District Attorney, has gotten married and has had two daughters. He is moving gradually into politics, beginning with raising funds for a children's community center at the Watts Towers with the patronage of the local councilman. At the same time, Blake has nurtured a psychotic fixation and lust for revenge against Styles while in prison, and has degenerated into further violence fighting against the Aryan Brotherhood. After killing an AB member with whom he had a grudge, he strikes a deal with the leader of the gang to plot an escape. Shortly before their escape, Kim, who has been incarcerated with Blake, is paroled, and plans to assist in Blake's escape and revenge plot on the outside. Blake and the AB members stage a violent and deadly prison break during a parole hearing, which only Blake and the AB leader survive. Shortly after, Blake murders the gang leader, shoots him in the knee, and burns his corpse. Kim had previously switched Blake's and the gang leader's dental records, and Blake expects the coroner to believe that Blake was the one killed (due to the dental records and knee injury), thus faking his own death.
Meanwhile, Styles is planning a telethon to raise money for his community center, planning to broadcast it from a church at which his father (John Amos) is a minister. He also finds his old friend Odessa, who has become a major drug-dealer in the neighborhood, to convince him forcefully to avoid the new center. Blake has returned to Los Angeles, and is keeping Styles under surveillance. On the night of the telethon, Blake cuts the power to Styles' house, and then shows up impersonating a utility worker to the babysitter watching Styles' daughters. He drugs the babysitter, and takes the opportunity to bug the house. He has sent $10,000 in cash and an anonymous letter to the telethon, posing as an anonymous benefactor. Later that night, after the telethon, Blake and Kim ambush the city councilman, who is taking the proceeds of the telethon to deposit them at the bank. They murder the councilman, staging his death to appear as a suicide, dressing him in drag, planting child pornography, leaving a suicide note that implicates him and Styles in child molestation, and stealing the $10,000 in cash.
The next morning, when the councilman is discovered, the implications of molestation and the missing money lead to a scandal implicating Styles, creating negative and intrusive media attention and suspicion from the District Attorney (Wagner) for whom he works. Later than evening, Styles is abducted by Blake. Realizing that Blake is alive, has murdered the councilman, and intends revenge, Blake explains that Styles owes his successful life to Blake, while Blake has sat in prison. Blake and Kim keep Styles for several days, regularly injecting him with heroin and cocaine, and hiring a female prostitute to rape him while he is drugged, which Blake videotapes while dubbing in his own previously-recorded dialog of Styles, making the incident appear consensual. They thereafter deposit him unconscious on the steps of City Hall, making him appear as a derelict. When he is found, his colleagues and the media treat his story with skepticism, which is only furthered when he unsuccessfully tries to lead them to the location where he was held and when the drugs and a gonorrhea infection (from the prostitute) are discovered during his post-release medical examination. This later revelation alienates Styles from his wife, and he spends an evening on the sofa, drunkenly talking back to the negative media coverage of himself on TV while being recorded by Blake until he passes out.
The next morning, he sees that a note has been left on his VCR to play it. When he does, he sees a video of Blake going up to his daughters' room and holding a hatchet over them just before the tape cuts out. Terrified, enraged, he finds the girls' room and the rest of the house empty with only a note that his wife has taken them to the park. Styles digs his old service revolver out of a nightstand and runs down the streets in his bathrobe to the park. As he is leaving, Kim returns to the house with another videotape. Tired, hungover and disoriented, he sees a black-clad adult figure approaching the stage where his girls are putting on a play. He tackles the figure and holds him and gunpoint, before the figure turns over to reveal that he is nothing more than a clown who is part of the performance. The incident occurs in front of and is videotaped by several prominent local people, whose children are in the play. This latest incident and his reaction to it cause the District Attorney to question his sanity. When he attempts to show her the videotape from his VCR, the tape has been substituted with one of him with the prostitute, complete with Blake's fake dialogue substituted in. The tape is at the same time released to the media. Vehemently protesting his innocence and Blake's complicity, Styles begins to appear to be delusionally paranoid to the District Attorney, who suspends him from his position.
Afterwards, his old partner Doyle, who is the only person still willing to believe him, approaches him with evidence of Blake's obsession found in his prison personal effects, and reveals that he has a lead that an Aryan Brotherhood affiliated bookstore is planning to get tickets and false passports for someone. Styles and Doyle go to the bookstore that night, and Styles beats information out of the bookstore owner. Kim is witnessed running away from the store, and Doyle chases him down an alley. Blake ambushes him and shoots him repeatedly in the alley, before tossing the gun to Styles who picks it up, leaving his fingerprints on it. Blake then escapes, and Doyle dies in Styles' arms, finally realizing that his friend had been right all along.
Now pursued as a murder suspect, Styles has few options. Desperately, he contacts his old, and perhaps last, friend Odessa, for help. He evacuates his family from their home, and takes them to the housing project Odessa uses as a drug lab. Putting his family in Odessa's hands, Styles and Odessa's gang initiate a plan to bring Blake into the open. After the project building is cleared, Styles goes to the roof and begins raving to the street below, appearing to be deranged and suicidal. The media arrives and broadcasts him live. Believing that Styles will kill himself, and deny Blake the satisfaction of seeing him incarcerated, Blake arrives at the project. Odessa's gangsters spot Blake there, and the plan continues. Styles fakes his own death, by starting a fiery explosion in the building and escaping. Odessa's gang abducts Kim, and Odessa sends a message to Blake that Styles is alive and intends to get him, challenging him to come to the Watts Towers.
At the towers, Blake finds Kim tied to the scaffolding, and Kim begins to berate Blake, telling him that Styles is going to get him. Blake shoots Kim in rage and Styles emerges, challenging Blake to come after him on the tower. On the tower, they fight, while Odessa and his gang ambush and incapacitate the police to prevent them from interfering. They allow the media through, and Styles reveals his plan to Blake, to let the media see him alive, revealing his plan, before he dies. They continue to fight, and the battle turns against Styles, until Odessa and his gang connect electrical mains to the metal tower, electrocuting Blake while Styles swings clear of the tower on a harness. Styles knocks the stunned Blake off the tower, and he lands on a spike protruding from the tower, impaling and killing him.
The film ends with Styles coming down from the towers, rejoining his wife and children. He calls out to Odessa one last time, inviting him to basketball that Saturday. Meanwhile the television news crews, who had played a major role in Styles' discommendation, are there, broadcasting the latest events that have dramatically proven Styles innocent. Styles at last joins a newscaster (Mary Ellen Trainor) on camera as she is broadcasting. When she asks him for a comment, he flippantly replies: "News at eleven? Nah!" and turns off the news camera. As the screen goes black, she replies "Styles, you can't do that, we're live!” to which he replies, "We're live, huh? Well good. Gail, kiss my ass!"
Themes
Major themes of Ricochet include revenge, obsession, and the rapid social and professional rise and fall of an individual based on chance and circumstance. Blake makes this clear in his revealing dialogue to Styles, pointing out that when the two of them were young and ambitious, one "took off, and lit up the sky like a meteor" because he had met the other. In many respects, Styles and Blake are complementary characters, with each in turn confronting the other in service of revenge. Blake spends years in prison obsessing over Styles, and, as his plan unfolds, Styles himself begins to appear to be losing mental composure and rationality under the stress. When they fight on the tower, Styles says to Blake: "I've got to thank you, Blake. Going insane, it's strangely liberating."
Ricochet could be construed as a social commentary as well. As Blake's plan begins to unfold, Styles' reputation is quickly tarnished by a credulous media, eager for any hint of scandal. While the media had earlier made Styles a hero, it quickly turns to make him appear deranged and corrupt. As Styles is African-American, Ricochet could be construed as a specific criticism of perhaps the easy readiness of society and the media to believe and propagate allegations and stereotypes of scandal or criminal behavior involving African-Americans.
Related to this commentary, but containing a more universal message, is the movie's denouement. As Blake's plan gradually destroys Styles' reputation and causes him to be pursued by the criminal justice system of which he had been a part, his only escape comes through enlisting the aid of his old friend, who has become a criminal. This conveys a message that one should not forget one's roots, background, and friends and that the professional and social contacts and culture that one may find are likely to be disloyal under pressure (though, at the same time, the fact that Odessa is a criminal and drug-dealer could be criticized as well for promoting another stereotype).
Trivia
In a deleted scene from the 2001 film Training Day, also starring Denzel Washington as a Los Angeles Police officer, Denzel's character shows a picture of himself as a young officer. The picture is taken from this film.