Denzel Washington built a persona on integrity, which is a rare thing to be able to project, and his best performances either rest on it or destroy it.
Glory won him Best Supporting Actor and contains a single shot of him weeping while being flogged that carries the film. Malcolm X is the biographical achievement, playing a man across three complete transformations.
Training Day is where he spends the persona, playing a corrupt narcotics detective, and it won him Best Actor. The performance works because the audience keeps waiting for the decency to reappear.
He has worked repeatedly with Tony Scott and Spike Lee, directed several films himself, and has become one of the few genuine box office draws whose name alone still opens a picture.
Antonio BanderasPhiladelphia (1993) rates 7 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. The first major studio film about AIDS, made deliberately as a courtroom drama so that a mainstream audience would watch it, and Tom Hanks won Best Actor over Daniel…
Byung-hun LeeThe Magnificent Seven (2016) rates 8 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Antoine Fuqua takes the same structure, casts it the way the American West really looked, and gives the villain a coherent economic argument. The last forty minutes…
Chiwetel EjioforSpike Lee's 2006 Manhattan bank heist. Denzel Washington, Clive Owen, Jodie Build.
Christopher WalkenTony Scott's 2004 Mexico City revenge thriller. One of the great late-career Denzel performances.
Chiwetel EjioforRidley Scott's 2007 Frank Lucas biopic. Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe in parallel protagonist tracks.
Andre BraugherMatthew Broderick plays Colonel. Denzel Washington won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar playing Private Trip, a runaway slave with no patience for white officers.
Denzel WashingtonTwo substantial adaptations of John Godey's subway hijacking novel. 1974 Walter Matthau and Robert Shaw foundational.
Denzel WashingtonDenzel Washington and Tony Scott's time travel thriller. The 10 rating reflects honest evaluation across multiple viewings.
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