Welcome to The Daily Cup a movie blog/writing project by Kyle B. Dekker, presented by Hot Chocolate Media. You can read series concept here. The basic rules, Kyle must watch 365 movies in 2018 and write about all of them. 292 of them have to be movies he's never seen before. Thanks for reading.
There are some movies that are so wild, batshit crazy, and tasteless that they end up being amazingly fun to watch. There is a reason people get together at midnight in theaters across the country to watch The Room or Rocky Horror Picture Show. It’s not because they are good films, it’s because they embrace and lean into their own established reality (which is often far from our own) and give zero fucks while entertaining you. Ricochet (1991) from trashy movie director extraordinaire Russell Mulcahy is one of these type of films.
Why yes that is John Lithgow in phonebook armor weilding a makeshit sword.
Denzel Washington in his most sexy physical prime plays Nick Styles a young beat cop who becomes a rising star after taking down hitman Earl Talbot Blake (John Lithgow) in a bizarre and very public fashion. A few years pass and this cop by day/law student by night Nick Styles is now the highly successful Assistant DA for Los Angeles. A rising star in the local political scene. Blake has become obsessed with Styles and plans and elaborate prison escape so he can then frame styles and ruin his life. The movie is an absurdist neo-noir action film, the script was written by genre master Fred Dekker and trash movie maestro Steven E. de Souza. You can find de Souza’s influence all over this film. His extreme action style from films like Commando and Die Hard oozes from this movie.
In case a viewer was expecting a serious film, very early in the first act it announced that there is nothing grounded in our reality and it’s creating its own cocktail for cops versus crooks. Shortly after arriving in prison Blake gets into a fight with his cellmate (played by Jesse “The Body” Ventura). To settle their dispute the Aryan Nation prisoners organize a battle for honor between the two convicts. Armed with swords made of sharpened bench press weight bars and adorned with armor made of newspaper and phonebooks the two men fight to the death in a sword fight sequence worthy of Highlander. The film never lays off the throttle with the absurdity and violence. And this scene lets you know what you are in for the rest of the way.
This movie is pure 100% unadulterated sleaze. The plot and visuals are a sordid mess of machismo, gore, and filth. The dialogue is sharp, crass, and unapologetically pulp. Both Denzel Washington and John Lithgow gnaw on scenery from beginning to end. They know they are in a trash movie, but they lean into it and embrace every unsavory moment of it. Explosions, guns, death by circular saw, adash of Kevin Pollak doing Captain Kirk, and super young Ice-T contributing a very good performance as a gang banger crime lord all make for a mess of a movie. At many times you will ask yourself “what the hell am I watching?” After it is over, you will consider watching it again, it’s like eating an entire bag of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, it’s bad for you but you can’t help yourself.
Tally
Movies new to me watched: 46/292
Other movies: 14/73
Total movies watched: 60/365
Have your own thoughts or opinions on this movie? Comment below or contact Kyle at kyle@hotchocolatemedia.net or on Twitter at @kbdekker.