August 8, 2025
When I am mapping out my blog posts for the year, I try to mix in a few special topics in addition to new releases and the latest news in the film world. Usually I will line up the topics with a director or actor who has a new project out or an anniversary of a good movie year. For instance, I have been thinking of doing a post about the career of Matt Damon, one of my favorite actors, and next year’s release of The Odyssey (in which he stars) seems like a good opportunity to do that. I’ve also wanted to do a deep dive on the fascinating career of two brothers who directed their first film over 40 years ago. Next year marks thirty years since the release of one of their iconic movies that should have won Best Picture. Is that a good reason to do a rewatch of their filmography and rank my favorites? You betcha! That’s a gigantic hint, in case you are wondering.
Anyway, heading into 2025, I was considering which special topics I should cover. I’ll be doing another scary movie post later this year in time for Halloween and am planning a post about my favorite Christmas movies this winter. But I needed to find an actor or director to dive into and luckily, a new release coming next week created the perfect excuse to look at the career of Denzel Washington. Highest 2 Lowest is the fifth collaboration between Washington and director Spike Lee and is a reimagining of a 1959 novel that was previously adapted into a phenomenal film by the legend Akira Kurosawa (1963’s High and Low.) You may not even be aware of this picture because Apple and A24 have done a horrible job marketing it. It will be in limited theaters next week and on Apple TV+ in early September. I will share my thoughts on it as part of my monthly movie report at the end of August.
In the meantime, I decided to rank my ten favorite Denzel movies. As I began this project, I discovered that his filmography was an enormous blind spot for me. Sure, I’ve seen some of the bigger titles, but he has made over 50 movies, appeared on Broadway several times, and has been nominated for nine Academy Awards, winning two. I had a lot of homework to do in advance of this blog post.
Denzel is simply one of the most talented actors of our generation and I think it’s for two main reasons. First, he can play any type of role. As you will see throughout this two-part look at his career, he is incredibly versatile in the types of performances he gives. The second reason is that he elevates so many movies from good to great or average to watchable. As I was watching some of his films, I kept thinking, “This is decent, but without Denzel it would be atrocious.” Examples of this are feel-good stories like Remember the Titans (which some people love and I thought was just ok), Antwone Fisher, and The Great Debaters. And then you have all of the action movies that he made like Fallen, The Taking of Pelham 123, Ricochet, Man on Fire, and The Equalizer, which were fun watches, but made infinitely better because he is on screen. Even if the film isn’t anything to write home about, he is still fantastic in everything he does – I’ve never seen him mail in a performance. Of course, I haven’t seen all of his movies. I didn’t bother checking out some of his early work that looks comically bad, and I missed a few later career ones. Once you’ve seen the first Equalizer movie, do you really need to see the two sequels? I am going to guess that the answer is no.
Ok, let’s get to my list, starting with a few honorable mentions.
Honorable Mentions
As I finalized my top ten, there were a few selections I wanted to call out even if they didn’t make the final cut.
- The Hurricane (1999) – The true story of wrongfully imprisoned Ruben “Hurricane” Carter features one of Denzel’s Oscar-nominated performances. He lost to Kevin Spacey for American Beauty (big yikes!) that year. Even though Denzel is outstanding, I couldn’t completely get behind this movie, as I found the side plot about the kid who inspired the attorneys who secured Carter’s release too schmaltzy. Look, it’s necessary for the story, I just found it not very effective and too big a part of the movie. The Hurricane is actually the first example I thought of where Denzel elevates a film by just doing what he does best.
- The Pelican Brief (1993) – Now, this is really a Julia Roberts movie, but Denzel is great as the newspaper reporter chasing the legal scandal that her character uncovers in this terrific John Grisham adaptation. They make the most of an interesting story that was laughable in the mid 90s but (sadly) wouldn’t surprise any of us today. One of the underrated pictures directed by the great Alan J. Pakula.
- Devil in a Blue Dress (1995) – Very good mid 90s film noir, directed by Carl Franklin and co-starring Don Cheadle in a great performance. Denzel plays a private investigator looking for a missing woman in 1940s New Orleans. A good “vibes” movie for the time and setting for this one.
- Gladiator II (2024) – Last year’s sequel to the 2000 Best Picture winner where Denzel showcased his ability to play a ruthless villain but also someone who you end up rooting for at times. Why? Because he’s Denzel Washington! Look, I liked this movie more than most people and agree that it wasn’t as good as the original (an incredibly high bar), but we can all agree that he is fantastic in this role.
#10 – Courage Under Fire (1996)
A unique story starring Denzel and Meg Ryan in the lead roles, even though they never share the screen. He plays a military officer charged with investigating the posthumous Medal of Honor nomination for Ryan’s character. The film is told in a Roshomon format where we see the events of a key battle sequence from the perspective of different characters after the fact. Denzel is terrific playing a complicated character who has to figure out what really happened, all while dealing with a troubled marriage and his own PTSD after a friendly-fire incident that opens the film. Courage Under Fire was known for being a big departure for Ryan, who was primarily in romantic comedies up until this point in her career. I think she is very good in this film, as is Matt Damon in a role where he lost 40 pounds to play a troubled soldier after the incident in question. His performance impressed Steven Spielberg so much that he cast him in Saving Private Ryan. This is a good 90s throwback action-drama that we don’t see too often anymore.
#9 – Glory (1989)
In the late 1980s, Denzel was probably best known for his good supporting performance in A Soldier’s Story and playing Steven Biko in Cry Freedom, the role that earned him his first Oscar nomination. For 1980s TV junkies like me, he was also known for the underrated television series St. Elsewhere, where he acted for six seasons. Yes, like George Clooney, he graduated from starring in a television hospital series to becoming a movie star.
So, it wasn’t too big of a surprise in 1989 that he was the highlight of Glory in a performance that won him an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. The film is the story of a squadron of Black soldiers in the Civil War, and Washington plays a soldier who is far from the military type. He is constantly talking back to his superior officers and gets in trouble on more than one occasion. I saw this movie years ago, and recently rewatched it for this blog post. Sure, you can make fun of Matthew Broderick’s accent, and the ham-handedness of some of the material, but Denzel stands out among all of the minor complaints about Glory. His scenes with Morgan Freeman, who tries to mentor some of the younger soldiers, are a few of the highlights. And no one who watches this movie will forget the scene where he stares down Broderick’s character while being whipped for his disobedience. An Oscar-reel moment if there ever was one. Glory showed us that we have a new movie star on our hands to look forward to for many years to come.
#8 – Fences (2016)
In looking at the latter part of Denzel’s career, Fences is probably the most accomplished of his films. For one, it was critically lauded, having been nominated for four Oscars including Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Supporting Actress (Viola Davis, who won.) It is also the best of the four films Washington has directed. Antwone Fisher, The Great Debaters and A Journal for Jordan were all disappointments. Fences was also important for another milestone in Denzel’s career. It was the first of three August Wilson plays that he has had a hand in bringing to the screen. He served as a producer on the other two – Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and The Piano Lesson – and has plans for further adaptations.
One of the reasons I like this film is because it shows us an effective performance by Denzel in his “older age.” It’s fascinating to go back to some of Hollywood’s greats whose careers spanned decades and see how they evolved as actors over that time. Names like Newman, Redford, and Streep come to mind. The ability to carry a film well into your sixties and seventies is quite impressive and Denzel seems to do it effortlessly in Fences and The Tragedy of Macbeth five years later.
In Fences, he plays a garbage collector who never accomplished what he wanted in life, and struggles with being a good father to his son, and helping his mentally-impaired brother. All the while, he has a tempestuous marriage to his wife (played by Davis), and can never get out of his own way to move forward in life. This role is an example of Denzel playing against-type – a character who is very flawed and makes a lot of mistakes, but you somehow still end up rooting for him because you like the actor so much. The August Wilson film adaptations can feel like plays at times, but that doesn’t take away from the quality of the work, especially Fences, which puts all of Denzel’s talents on display.
#7 – American Gangster (2007)
When I covered the career of Ridley Scott last year, I mentioned that this is probably one of his more overlooked films, and that’s a shame. I have to think that it was overshadowed by another movie about a gangster being chased by the cops that came out the previous year and won Best Picture. You could understand after the success of The Departed if people wanted something different at the theater. Regardless, this is a great crime-drama based on the true story of Frank Lucas (played by Washington) who built a criminal empire by smuggling heroin from Vietnam on military service planes during the latter years of the war. He is pursued by a New Jersey detective (Russell Crowe) who is determined to take down the operation.
On the one hand, this can come across as a typical “criminal gets chased by the cops” story, but it is elevated by Scott’s direction and two terrific lead performances. Denzel plays Lucas with a viciousness that we rarely see from him, aside from Training Day. There is a scene where he steps out of a restaurant, walks up to one of his rivals and just executes him in the middle of street, and walks back in to finish his meal. We see early on that Lucas is not fucking around and will stomp on anyone that gets in his way. I also liked Crowe in this film, which is still in the middle of a good run of movies he made. It’s a few years before things seemed to go off the rails in terms of the roles he chose. Don’t get me wrong – I’m still happy to see him show up in a decent film every now and then (like 2023’s The Pope’s Exorcist). But American Gangster is still when Crowe could command top billing across another big movie star in Denzel. This one is on the long side (at 2 ½ hours), but if you like these kinds of stories, it’s worth checking out.
#6 – Crimson Tide (1995)
Of the five movies that Denzel made with director Tony Scott, this is definitely my favorite, although there are a few others (like Unstoppable and Man on Fire) that I like as well. And to get it out of the way, this is also the second best submarine movie ever made. I’m sorry, nothing is topping The Hunt for Red October, one of my all-time favorites.
Crimson Tide is an example of a classic story that we have seen many times in movies – a military officer challenging his superior. You can go all the way back to Mutiny on the Bounty (and all of the remakes of that film) through A Few Good Men in 1992 to find examples of these conflicts. It helps to have two heavyweight stars at the top of the call sheet in a movie like this. If you are going to watch two actors go toe-to-toe and wonder who is going to come out on top, you need two icons. How about Gene Hackman and Denzel Washington? Yeah, that will do.
Hackman plays the commanding officer of a submarine who meets his new executive officer (Washington) as they set out on their mission. They don’t see eye-to-eye on training the men on the sub, and things become more complicated after an attack interrupts some messages they receive on their radio, which is damaged. It’s unclear if they should follow through on an order to attack a Russian base. What follows is a cat-and-mouse game between the two men as they try to convince some of the crewmembers to join their cause and get command of the sub. Nothing is better in a submarine film than someone telling the captain, “You’re relieved. Step down.” Just some great movie shit there.
What I love about Crimson Tide is that as the tension ratchets up throughout the film, you are still riveted by what will happen – entirely because of Hackman and Washington going up against each other. Because of their stature in movies at this time, you aren’t sure who is going to prevail. Not many could stand up to someone like Hackman in a believable way, but Denzel certainly had the cache and talent to do it. Just an all-around fun 90s action movie and one of his best performances.
That’s all for this week. I hope you enjoyed part one of my look at Denzel Washington’s career and some of my favorite films in which he has appeared. I’ll be back next week for part two and my top five Denzel films. Thanks for reading and if you’d like to be notified of future posts, you can subscribe below.