Denzel Washington (Training Day, American Gangster) vulnerable? Sure, we’ve seen that before. While more the exception than the rule, we have seen Washington play roles where his character doesn’t always have the answers or is susceptible to outcomes behind his control. These films include Flight, Man on Fire, Out of Time,  John Q, Fences, and He Got Game. But scared? Outside of John Q, I don’t know if there’s a movie where one of his characters has been so frantic that he is completely hidden from the confident and poised Denzel that we expect and love. All of that changes in Dan Gilroy’s Roman J. Israel Esq., his follow-up directorial performance after blazing onto the Hollywood landscape with 2014’s Nightcrawler. When I first saw the preview for Roman J. Israel Esq., I thought this might be a throwaway film for Washington. In a year when there have been more than a few trailers that show a completely different picture than what the movie is actually about, this film might take the cake. The trailer, to me, portrays Washington’s character as a cocky hotshot lawyer who gets caught up in being a power-hungry monger. Heck, the trailer I just watched made it look like it was a comedy of all things. Nothing was further from the case. I might not have even seen this movie if Washington had not been nominated for a Best Actor Oscar. The movie got mixed reviews and only ended up with a 52% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. His nomination over James Franco (The Disaster Artist), Jake Gyllenhaal (Stronger), and Tom Hanks (The Post) surprised many, namely myself. As a result of the nomination, I was obligated to watch this movie, and I’m really, really glad I did. Roman J. Israel Esq. was a movie that, in my opinion, was marketed wrongly. Also, I felt this to be an underrated movie. Furthermore, while I still believe the Academy got this year’s Best Actor nominations correctly outside of this one (I would have given his nomination to Gyllenhaal ), I was remarkedly impressed with Washington’s performance as a neurotic and paranoid civil activist attorney with all of the good intentions in the world who also happens to fall somewhere on the Autism spectrum.
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