150 Word Review: 'Ricochet' (1990)

It's like 'Gaslight' with explosions

Photo: Warner Bros.

There is a recklessness to Ricochet, the 1990 thriller starring Denzel Washington as a hunky, charismatic former cop-turned-prosecutor terrorized by a psychopath he put behind bars years before after a nailbiting arrest caught on videotape. John Lithgow is at the top of his villain game as a sadistic madman with different colored eyes. 

The movie is inappropriate and... fun. There's nudity, profanity, bullets blow grapefruit-sized holes in good and bad guys, and our hero is drugged and given an STD against his will. Director Russell Mulcahy injects adrenaline directly into the spine of every scene,

Richochet captures a brief cultural moment between the right-wing law and order 80s and a new decade that will explode a year later when the world watches out-of-focus footage of four L.A. cops beating an unarmed Black man. There's a surprise switcheroo, too: City Hall can't be trusted, but drug-dealing gangsters led by Ice-T can.

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