4am_wakeupcall’s review published on Letterboxd:
After about 40 minutes of Ricochet I had to hit pause and take a lengthy break, not due to lack of engagement but rather because my brain had not been properly prepared for such an onslaught of stimuli. It is amongst my most bizarre film-watching experiences this year.
My girlfriend wanted to watch this - certainly I can see the revenge plotline appealing to her and it's from the writer of Die Hard! You've got Denzel playing a suave cop-turned-lawyer and John Lithgow playing a psychopath, so right there the movie has two massive pillars of strength. I didn't know anything else going in. We start the movie and my girlfriend says 'I'm hoping this will be like In The Line of Fire'.
It's not.
Opening credits roll... music sounds like an unused cue from Predator (the unmistakable sound of Alan Silvestri). First warning flag is third-billed Ice-T, a man unaccustomed to the smell of a good script. Second warning flag is the aforementioned screenwriter, who I knew from his resume is not a man renowned for taut, labyrinthine thrillers. Third warning flag: Directed by Russell 'Highlander' Mulcahy... oh my god this is going to be trash.... please be entertaining trash!
It is.
I'm finding it really tricky to provide quick point-of-reference films that match the tone here. John Flynn's 'Lock-Up' and 'Out For Justice' come to mind (I enjoy both) - an action/crime/thriller with heaps of violence and brutish, inhuman caricatures. However the pacing of Ricochet makes John Flynn look like John Sayles. So let's instead look at screenwriter Steven E. de Souza, who did adapt Die Hard yet throughout the 90s had a hand in Judge Dredd, Hudson Hawk, Street Fighter and Knock Off. Now imagine that mind belching out the bastard child of Cape Fear and Death Wish.
The plot... forget it you're better off jumping on this rollercoaster blindfold.
Ricochet is perilously balanced between two schools of thought. As a pot-boiling thriller it is a fiasco; wildly inconsistent and generally unbelievable. Yet as a self-consciously silly B-movie it is uproarious, with pitch-perfect performances from our two leads. I lurched towards the latter outlook, partly due to the director (bit of a maverick, certainly not a hack) yet more because the level of crazy shit in this film is far too high for serious deliberation. I'll mention these scenes (all take place in first 30 mins):-
- Denzel distracts J.L. by stripping down to his boxers in the middle of a carnival, then pulling a gun out of said boxers
- The female District Attorney strolls into the men's locker room of a police department and promptly offers Denzel a job (he is naked)
- J.L. is accosted by gigantic cell-mate Jesse Ventura. Ventura is promptly smashed over a porcelain toilet and rendered unconscious.
- J.L. and Ventura then engage in mortal combat, sporting swords (Highlander tribute!) and duct-taped phone books for body armour. This is completely unregulated by the prison guards.
When Ice-T actually brings a comparative degree of normalcy to proceedings... well that should speak volumes.