Ricochet

Just fucking weird guys.  I mean I could go through this the normal way but there are so many bizarre things I want to touch on that I’m gonna do something different this time.  I’ll make a laundry list of stuff that’s actually in the movie and you can decide for yourself if it sounds like something you might dig.  Let’s give it a shot:

               

The opening credit sequence is a throwback to Hitchcock with thin vertical lines constantly forming and images of a person holding a gun in silhouette in the background.  The lines eventually turn to reveal the title “Ricochet”.  The score is by Alan Silvestri and is very Predator 2-like which tends to make this intro even more Hitchcock-y by almost mimicking the very start of the main Psycho theme.  The end result is that it looks and sounds really awesome.

               

Nick Styles (Denzel Washington (Virtuosity, He Got Game)) and Larry Doyle (Kevin Pollack (Grumpy Old Mens, End of Days)) play street hoops for bills against Ice-T (Surviving the Game) and his huge partner (Lydell Cheshier (The Cable Guy)).    
    

Styles “charms” a woman (his future wife actually) by asking her out on a date repeatedly even to the point of writing her up a fake traffic ticket (he’s a cop) until she relents.  Styles comes off as an arrogant dick throughout the movie in my opinion.

John Lithgow (2010, The Pelican Brief) plays the bad guy, Earl Talbot Blake, which seemed to be something Hollywood thought was a good idea for a while.  He also played the villain in Cliffhanger and Raising Cain around the same time.  I don’t get it.  He can sure act like an asshole but he doesn’t have the right look at all.  I don’t buy him as a tough guy which he is definitely supposed to be here.

Styles undresses down to his underwear to neutralize a hostage situation where Blake is holding someone at gunpoint.  I guess…sure.  It works!

Pollack’s character is supposed to be a somewhat hardened cop that can beat up and run down bad guys.  Yea, I think he was miscast too.

There’s a gladiatorial type fight between Blake and his cellmate, Jesse “The Body” Ventura (Predator, The Running Man).  They get phone books taped to their bodies and use homemade sword/staff weapons to slash at each other.  This fight takes place in prison by the way with only prisoners gathered round to watch.  My guess is that it would be hard to keep something like this quiet so either the guards/warden are getting paid off or no one cares.  Either way it sure is gonna be hard to explain away a dead Jesse Ventura with phone books strapped to him and a giant hole in the middle of his chest if anyone starts asking questions.  Oh sorry, spoiler on that last sentence.

Some prison guards get horribly mutilated with power tools.

This is really a revenge story so what Blake does to retaliate against Styles is shoot him up with heroin, coke and also gives him gonorrhea.

There’s footage of a totally strung out Styles having sex with a prostitute.

Styles drunkenly talks to himself about how shitty of a person he is.

Blake leaves Styles footage of himself brandishing a hatchet over Styles’ two little sleeping girls.  He even pulls his arm up to take a swing but turns the camera off just before.

Denzel is shirtless a lot in this thing.  And I mean A LOT.

Styles negotiates with Ice-T and his crew to not distribute drugs in the community.  Ok, I say “negotiates” but really Styles brings in a grenade and threatens to kill everyone in the room if they don’t do what he says.

Story by Fred Dekker (Monster Squad, Robocop 3), screenplay by Steven E de Souza (48 Hrs, Commando, The Running Man, Die Hard, Die Hard 2).

Mary Ellen Trainor (Romancing the Stone) plays reporter Gale Wallens.  That’s the same character she played in Die Hard.  So I guess the filmmakers are saying that this movie takes place in the same universe as the Die Hard pictures.  Wow, who woulda thunk it?

Styles and Blake arm wrestle…twice.

Blake has a bunch of great lines, here are some of my favorites:

                “The last time I held a gun in this hand a young man took off all his clothes for me.”

“…I’d pay a visit to your house…to fuck your wife and your daughter, hell maybe even your dog.” (smiles and laughs)

Guard: “The parole board’s ready Blake, I hope you remembered to floss.”

                Blake: “I did, with your wife’s pubic hair.”

I can’t get over how odd so much of this movie is.  Sure it’s not Videodrome or El Topo weird but there are a lot of questionable, yet interesting, choices that were made.  Like Kevin Pollack does his William Shatner impression at one point and one of Blake’s eyes is faded and discolored without explanation of why that is.

If any of the shit I listed above floats your boat then you should definitely check out this whacked out revenge thriller.

Assassins

Jesus what a boring fucking movie.  There was no excuse for this.  You have Sly Stallone who was coming off of a nice run with Cliffhanger, Demolition Man and The Specialist.  He also did Judge Dredd the same year as Assassins which may not be the greatest but at least it has style (I love the production design in that film).  Stallone hits a wall starting with this film and with the exception of Cop Land (which was alright) doesn’t pull out of the tailspin until Rocky Balboa elven years later.

Antonio Banderas had a monster year in 1995 doing five goddamn movies (Miami Rhapsody, Desperado, Four Rooms, Assassins, Never Talk to Strangers).  Funny enough the first movie he did in 1996 was called Two Much (pardon the pun).  But he was in prime form, if being stretched a bit thin that year.

And Richard Donner (Lethal Weapons, Maverick) was starting the end of his career (he would only make four more pictures after this) and seems to be getting rusty.

I can totally see how everyone involved thought this would be an action packed kick ass movie about rival assassins after the same target.  The Wachowski’s (The Matrixes) wrote this, along with Brian Helgeland (L.A. Confidential, ThePostman, Payback), and it was their first major Hollywood job.  I’m not a really big fan of the Wachowskis but the script doesn’t seem terrible.  Ok, Stallone being an assassin with a heart of gold is pretty fucking dumb but the basic premise is solid.  I dunno what happened.

I can’t stress enough just how uninteresting the final product is.  Stallone does not look like he’s into it at all and at the other end Banderas feels like he’s overcompensating with his incredibly gregarious and sinister disposition.  Nothing really gels.

Even the action scenes are boring.  Sequences like the one where Stallone is driving a cab and Banderas is in the back and they’re both trying to kill each other while speeding through traffic sound fucking awesome but come off as tedious instead.  I mean the finale to the thing is Banderas waiting for Stallone to walk out the front door of a bank so he can snipe him.  It should be filled to the gills with tension but it’s not.  You see Stallone knows Banderas’ plan so he simply stays inside the bank.  That’s fucking bogus man.

This is one you can definitely skip.  There are plenty of better movies out there about assassins like Leon: The Professional, The Killer or even John Wick.  Check out one of those instead. 

Fire, Ice & Dynamite

Before the film begins there’s a warning to not do what you’re about to see without professional guidance.  I think the reason the filmmakers put this up is because unlike your typical action movie with gunplay and martial arts this picture adapts recreational activities like skiing and biking for their sequences.  The warning isn’t really necessary in my opinion but it is true that the movie is a stunt show with minimal story to loosely tie things together.

It’s about a millionaire (Roger Moore (Moonraker)) who fakes his own death (unsubtly too, he muses to his financial managers about what would happen if he opened the door to his plane in mid-flight and then proceeds to do just that) to avoid financial ruin but also to bring his three disassociated and disparate children together to become a family.  Moore put all of his money into this quasi Olympics type event called the Megathon (I love the stupidly generic but huge sounding name).  Anyone who has a claim against his estate can compete but only one can win the entire 135 mil.  The contestants have to do all sorts of shit like kayak, climb up a dam wall, drive through winding mountainous snowy roads and even ski through a goddamn loop (you know, like on a roller coaster).

Even though most of the events make no sense, like skiing down a snow-less giant gravel hill, it also seems that there aren’t any rules on how to complete the courses.  A lot of these guys out and out cheat by either using different routes, vehicles or even weapons in some cases.  In addition, each claimant hires professional athletes to be a part of their team.  So this isn’t a real competition with a level playing field.  But the filmmakers make it seem like everyone’s neck and neck all the time.

Probably the best thing about the film, besides a bunch of the admirable stunt work, is that the teams in the Megathon all have a different theme.  There’s the milk team that sports bull horns on their helmets and car (which doesn’t make a lot of sense if you think about it), the communications team that has a fax machine on their bike, the beer team that constantly chugs beer during the events, the banana guy that’s always eating bananas (and using them to fight with) and etc.  This is what makes the picture different and easier to watch than it should be.  You want to see how all of these themes fight against each other and how they would use their specific thematic attributes to give them an advantage.  This shit gets totally fuckin’ ridiculous too, like one team is made up of what looks like Buddhist type folks and they use their powers to float up and hover!  How do you combat that?

There’s some fabricated tension between Moore’s kids but they gloss over the usual parts where they have to convince each other they need to work together and remind themselves that they’re family.  But the film is so hollow story-wise anyway that these typical corny scenes aren’t missed.  Plus I’m constantly being distracted by someone doing a killer ski jump through the air. 

However, the filmmakers must’ve thought there needed to be more tension and came up with this brother/sister villain combo.  They enter the Megathon because they want the money even though they don’t have a legit claim on it.  They’re also the comic relief with their embarrassing blundering and endless bickering.  I have to admit I kinda like these characters because they did make me laugh to myself a couple of times.  And they both have shaved heads which is a little weird and servants even though they don’t appear to have any money.  I dunno, they’re a strange couple of characters.  There isn’t really a single reason why they needed to be in the film nor is there one given.

But this is all about the stunt work.  And it’s all nicely done.  Some of the stuff does look pretty crazy like one of the siblings hangs on to a guy for dear life that’s paraskiing through the air, people are bungee jumping off a bridge to pass a baton to their teammate below waiting in a kayak and just the skiing and snowboarding down rocky mountainsides looks really dangerous, especially when some are supposed to look like they’re out of control and swerving and tumbling everywhere.  These stunt people really did a fantastic job.

One time skier and ski stunt cinematographer Willy Bogner directed this.  He worked on the ski scenes in a bunch of Bond films: On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, The Spy Who Loved Me, For Your Eyes Only and A View to a Kill (so this accounts for Roger Moore’s appearance here).  Fire, Ice & Dynamite appears to be something of an offshoot to his previous film Fire and Ice.  I don’t think there’s a story in that though and looks like more of a ski/snowboard compilation/music video thing.  It actually looks pretty intriguing with all of this beautiful footage of people doing their ski thang excellently.  It also looks 80’s as hell.  White Magic is another movie Bogner did in 1994 that’s essentially the same as Fire and Ice except with more people on a snowboard being towed behind a snowmobile in a green meadow.

Anyway Fire, Ice & Dynamite isn’t the easiest movie to recommend because it’s cartoony and little more than a montage of stunt footage.  But if you’re into stunt work and maybe even winter sports (there tends to be a heavy lean on that) you might enjoy it a little.  As long as you can get past the completely nonsensical setup (there are so many things that can (and should have) gone wrong with Roger Moore’s plan in this that I don’t’ have the patience to go through it all) there’s a decent time to be had.