“Too dark”: This action thriller with Denzel Washington was actually supposed to be a “Dirty Harry” movie, but Clint Eastwood turned it down

For five films, Clint Eastwood as Inspector Callahan aka ‘Dirty Harry’ hunted down serial killers and other serious criminals – and one of the growling investigator’s trademarks is undoubtedly that he sometimes uses rather brutal and risky methods to restore law and order. . But Eastwood rejected a script originally intended to make another ‘Dirty Harry’ film because he felt it was too dark and radical for the iconic thriller series:

Filmmaker and author Fred Dekker initially had Eastwood in mind for his story about a tricky cat-and-mouse game between a police officer and a psychopathic murderer whom he once put behind bars in a highly publicized manner. After the Hollywood veteran lost interest, ‘Only 48 Hours’ author Steven E. de Souza turned the basic idea into a script.

In 1991 the action-crime film “Ricochet – the impact“, in which none other than the later “The Equalizer” is a star Denzel Washington embodied by agent Nick Styles, who has to deal with Earl Talbott Blake, played by John Lithgow. While Joel Silver (“Die Hard”) produced, Russell Mulcahy – who brought the sequel to his cult fantasy film “Highlander” to the screen that same year – took over the direction.

There is currently only an old DVD of the film in Germany without the original sound and in the wrong picture format, but there is a Spanish import Blu-ray that also contains the German dubbed version:

In an interview with Fred Dekker talked about the connections with the ‘Dirty Harry’ franchise – because after seeing ‘Ricochet’ the interviewer could hardly imagine that instead of Denzel Washington the focus should actually be on Clint Eastwood in his absolute star role:

“First of all, I love ‘Dirty Harry’ and ‘Callahan’ [so der deutsche Verleihtitel des zweiten Films der Reihe, der im Original ,Magnum Force’ heißt, Anm. d. Red.] “Very bad,” says Dekker. “I’m a big Eastwood fan. He’s one of my favorite movie stars. But after the first two films, the others just weren’t as good anymore. So I thought I could just write a script myself.”

Dekker explains his ideas: ‘Without knowing it, I stole from a film I had not yet seen, ‘Bait for the Beast’ [der 1991 von Martin Scorsese als ,Kap der Angst’ neuverfilmt wurde, Anm. d. Red.]. I thought, what if Harry arrested a man years ago who got out of prison and is now making his life hell? So far it’s pretty common.

My producer Joel Silver claims he sent it to Clint, but that doesn’t make sense. Joel had his own production company, so he could just do it himself, and he did. He said Clint thought it was ‘too dark’ for him.”

Fred Dekker wanted to direct “Ricochet” himself – with Kurt Russell

Dekker therefore doubts Joel Silver’s version of the story, which cannot be refuted. It was briefly discussed that Dekker would direct “Ricochet – The Impact” himself, but after he could not get his absolute favorite for the leading role, he threw in the towel: “There were about five seconds where I wanted to direct. I’ve met Kurt Russellwho would play the police officer. […] But I couldn’t convince him. This should be written on my gravestone: ‘Husband. Father. We failed to convince Kurt. ”

“Ricochet” was a box office failure, but genre fans still appreciate the film to this day. By the way, Dekker is not the only one who failed to get Kurt Russell as the leading actor; Hong Kong action legend John Woo (“The Killer”) also had to admit defeat. You can read about the difficult experiences he had with his replacement Jean-Claude Van Damme in the following article: