Ricochet

An attorney is terrorized by the criminal he put away years ago when he was a cop.

• Director: * Russell Mulcahy
  
• Genre:Action / Crime / Drama / Thriller
• Runtime:102 minutes

Cast

Denzel Washington : Nick Styles
John Lithgow : Blake
Ice-T : Odessa (as Ice T)
Kevin Pollak : Larry
Lindsay Wagner : Brimleigh

The film begins in 1984, depicting Nicholas Styles (Washington), a mild-mannered 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 (Victoria Dillard) and is drifting away from 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 (Pollak) 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, Blake 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 escape 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. Read more

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