Every now and then a movie comes along that is so preposterous, so devoid of any reality or logic, you have to wonder how it got made. "Ricochet," a hard R-rated thriller that is wildly over the top, certainly qualifies.
There is a terrific idea here — a psychotic killer plots revenge on the media-star cop who put him away by making him look like a sleazeball hypocrite. And the stars are two fine performers whose work I usually enjoy. But the story is so dumb and the performances so over-baked, it seems like a step backward for everyone involved.
The film begins in 1984 with hotshot rookie cop Denzel Washington and his partner (comic Kevin Pollak) at a local carnival where they interfere with killer John Lithgow's efforts to make off with drug money after mowing down a bunch of dealers.
Washington flamboyantly takes Lithgow down, an event captured on tape by an amateur video photographer, which subsequently makes Washington a media sensation. Since he's going to night school to become a lawyer, he is spotted as a future star by the L.A. district attorney ("Bionic Woman" Lindsay Wagner).
Then we leap forward several years — Washington is an assistant DA, married with two kids and is being encouraged to run for public office. And his positive profile takes another leap when he organizes a telethon, broadcast from the church of his preacher father (John Amos), for a children's center he's founding.
But as the years have passed, imprisoned Lithgow has become more and more obsessed with getting revenge, while tracking Washington's rising star. Eventually he escapes (in a gruesome scene that has one person killed with a power saw to the neck and another with a power drill to the head, looking more like "The Toolbox Murders" than a mainstream thriller) and manages to convince authorities he's been killed.
Lithgow begins setting Washington up by framing him for everything from child molestation to embezzlement, allowing the same media that has made him a star to begin roasting him. And, naturally, when Washington tries to convince everyone he's being framed by Lithgow, they all think he's nuts. After all, Lithgow's dead, right?
To list them all would take enough paper to fell a forest, but some of "Ricochet's" more ridiculous moments include: Wagner entering a police locker room, confronting a nude Washington and calmly congratulating him on capturing Lithgow; Lithgow, dressed in a makeshift gladiator costume, battling a bully in prison; Washington, mimicking James Cagney's final scene in "White Heat," screaming "Top o' the world, Ma!" atop a warehouse; Lithgow using an abandoned hotel swimming pool as a place to torture Washington, though the next day the pool is full and the hotel is operating; Washington's former school chum Ice T, now a high-rolling drug-dealer, allowing his old friend to blow up his entire drug operation to briefly fake his death.
Written by Steven E. De Souza (the "Die Hard" movies), Fred Dekker ("Little Monsters") and Menno Meyjes ("The Color Purple"); directed by Russell Mulcahy ("Highlander"); and overacted by Washington and Lithgow, "Ricochet" starts off interestingly but rapidly goes downhill after the first half-hour or so, and becomes surprisingly gruesome and sleazy.
It is rated R for extreme violence, a graphic sex scene, nudity, profanity, vulgarity and drug use.