An attorney is terrorized by the criminal he put away years ago when he was a cop.
Acting
Lithgow's operatic psychopath performance goes full Shakespeare-in-prison.
Direction
Mulcahy's music video chops make every frame aggressively stylish.
Writing
Dialogue so pulpy it circles back to genuinely memorable.
Director
Russell Mulcahy
Denzel Washington
Nick Styles
John Lithgow
Earl Talbott Blake
Ice-T
Odessa
Kevin Pollak
Det. Larry Doyle
Lindsay Wagner
D.A. Priscilla Brimleigh
Mary Ellen Trainor
Gail Wallens
Josh Evans
Kim
Victoria Dillard
Alice
John Amos
Reverend Styles
John Cothran
Councilman Farris
Linda Dona
Wanda
Matt Landers
Chief Floyd
Starletta DuPois
Mrs. Styles
Sherman Howard
Kiley
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
This was Denzel Washington's first true action-hero lead after prestige dramas, and he reportedly took it specifically to prove he could carry a blockbuster. The film flopped, but his physicality here paved the way for Training Day and the Equalizer franchise.
The film's lurid mix of racial anxiety, sexual humiliation, and paranoid masculinity captures early 90s moral panic cinema perfectly—think Falling Down's angrier, less coherent cousin. Ice-T's casting as a drug lord who becomes Styles' unlikely ally subtly inverts the era's typical 'war on drugs' narratives.
US
