‘Ricochet’: Denzel Washington’s forgotten ‘Die Hard’ spinoff

Posted On February 26, 2025February 26, 2025

Denzel Washington has been in so many iconic movies and played such a wide range of characters over the years that it can be easy to lose track of it all. He’s been in biopics, period dramas, romances, action movies, and whatever Gladiator 2 is. He’s played real-life heroes and fictional characters who turned into heroes for people in real life.

Despite this track record of versatility, it’s difficult to imagine him in the Die Hard universe. The franchise is so inextricably tied to Bruce Willis that any other actor is unthinkable in the lead, even though Willis was pretty much the last person in Hollywood that the studio wanted to play John McClane. It had already been offered to every major male star, including Clint Eastwood, Sylvester Stallone, Harrison Ford, Robert De Niro, Richard Gere, and possibly even Frank Sinatra.

Washington was never in contention to play McClane. When the film came out in 1988, he hadn’t yet starred in his breakout film, Glory, and was nowhere near the action genre. However, in 1991, just a few years down the line, Washington appeared in the Russell Mulcahy action thriller Ricochet, in which he played Nick Styles, an assistant district attorney who is being stalked by a killer who he put behind bars when he was a cop.

Although the story and most of the characters in Ricochet are different from Die Hard, Mary Ellen Trainor reprises her role as the news anchor Gail Wallens. In the 1988 film, she covers the hostage situation inside Nakatomi Plaza, while in the sequel, she covers Styles’ heroism when he brings the killer to justice for the first time early in the movie. This might seem like a tenuous connection, but Steven E de Souza, the co-writer behind both projects, clearly did it on purpose. There is also more than a subtle nod to McClane in the last part of the film, in which Styles runs around with minimal clothing, looking shredded.

Washington said that he took the role because he hadn’t done an action movie yet and wanted to try something new. He clearly had an aptitude for it. Although it is usually a struggle for actors who have established themselves in a genre like action or romantic comedies to be taken seriously when they venture into dramas (we’re all waiting with bated breath to see if Scorsese can turn The Rock into an actor), it is also true that critically-acclaimed dramatic actors can hurt their reputations when they attempt a popcorn genre like action.

At the time the film came out, Washington had been nominated for a second Oscar for Glory and was well on his way to becoming one of the most respected actors of his generation. A foray into action movies at this stage could have been a career killer, but as usual, his mere presence upgraded the film significantly.

Ricochet wasn’t anywhere close to Die Hard in terms of thrills or longevity, and Washington didn’t come close to giving Willis a run for his money, but it did prove that he could slip seamlessly from Oscar-winning drama to pulse-pounding action thriller with ease, something he has continued to do ever since.

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