PicoBlog

It is known that Denzel Washington is quite possibly the best male actor alive.* This has been the case for, I don’t know, at least two decades now, right? He was beloved and celebrated all throughout the 90s, and by the time he won his second Oscar (for Training Day, which I will surely write about someday) in five nominations, I think we all kinda looked around and said “So this guy’s the best, right? We all agree? Okay, cool.”

But let’s turn the dial back about a decade. Because pinpointing the moment everyone else knew Denzel is the greatest is one thing. I want to know when he knew it.

In March of 1990, Denzel Washington won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in Glory, a film that I watched in my 10th grade history class and have not seen since.** This was not exactly a surprise; the man was getting great parts right out of the gate, including the role of Steve Biko in Cry Freedom two years earlier, which earned him his first Oscar nomination. And while he wasn’t the first Black actor to win this most coveted award—Hattie McDaniel, Sidney Poitier, and Louis Gossett Jr. blazed those trails before him—there was still a lack of precedent for the success he was having.

So what do you do at this point in your career? When you achieve your field’s highest honor in only your seventh film (after almost getting there in your fourth film)? He did exactly what I would’ve done: something absolutely bonkers.

When he hoisted that statue, Denzel already had one film that had just hit theaters—Heart Condition, co-starring the legendary Bob Hoskins—and another film in the can—Spike Lee’s Mo’ Better Blues, the precursor to their seminal collaboration on Malcolm X two years later. But his next two post-Oscar roles feel very “one for you, one for me.” The “one for you” was Mississippi Masala, an intercontinental romantic drama that received a very positive critical reception and just recently wound up in the Criterion Collection. And the “one for me” was Ricochet, which did neither of those things.***

Ricochet is essentially Denzel Washington’s playground, a part so unhinged and meandering that it checks almost every pulpy box you can think of. Guided by a script from genre legend Steven E. de Souza,**** it feels like Denzel is finally letting loose—he knows he can do anything he wants because he’s already earned the top prize and more prestige fare is right around the corner. It’s almost like a dry run for his Tony Scott era.

All you really need to know is that Denzel plays a cop who becomes a lawyer who becomes an assistant district attorney who becomes the victim of a criminal mastermind’s almost perfect frame job. But I could go on. I could tell you that he plays basketball with Ice-T, picks up his future wife with a pair of incredible lines, talks through a hostage situation while stripping down to his boxer shorts, delivers a rousing closing speech in a critical court case, negotiates with a drug kingpin (also Ice-T) while holding a grenade, and anchors a community telethon from his father’s pulpit. And then I could tell that all of these things happen before the conflict kicks in. (But don’t take my word for it.)

Ricochet might not be Denzel’s best performance.***** It might not be his biggest performance either.****** But I think it might be his most performance. And what a blessing it is.

*Many would give Daniel Day-Lewis the edge, and I would hear (and maybe agree) with those arguments. But since he’s “retired,” we can all just agree that Denzel’s the top working man in his field.

**Shouts out to Ms. Nicholas.

***Wikipedia tells me that Siskel & Ebert both gave Ricochet a thumbs down, calling it “ridiculous, goofy, embarrassing, unsavory, and distasteful.” Not their finest hour.

****If you didn’t know, this man wrote 48 Hours, The Running Man, Judge Dredd, and the first two Die Hard films. Doesn’t get much better than that.

*****That would be Malcolm X.

******That would be Training Day.

Ricochet is available on HBO Max, Cinemax, and DirecTV.

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