Nick Styles (Denzel Washington) is a cop in the L.A.P.D. who becomes the assistant district attorney of L.A. During a carnival, master criminal Earl Talbot Blake (John Lithgow) creates a scene after a drug deal that went wrong. Styles and Blake confront each other, during which Blake is wounded by Styles and later sent to prison. Seven years later, Blake escapes from prison during a parole board hearing to carry out his revenge against Styles. He seeks to tear Styles's life apart and what follows is a violent series of events that destroys Styles' career. Ricochet takes the pace to breaking point as one man's pain becomes another man's very twisted pleasure.