Talk about The tragedy of being bored. Now and then, a movie earns more undeserved praise than it is worth because of an established director securing multiple acting heavyweights. The most recent example I can think of was in 2017 when Steven Spielberg combined with Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks for The Post; the movie was dubbed an Oscar lock, especially after 2015’s fantastic movie Spotlight (also about a newspaper reporting a highly publicized scandal) received six Academy Award nominations, including two wins. Drab, The Post failed to meet expectations, earning just six Academy Award nominations and winning just two.
Category Archives: Denzel Washington
Training Day (2001)
Denzel Washington (Flight, He Got Game) and Ethan Hawke (Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, Boyhood) began their careers in 1985. Washinton has a more storied career with four Oscar nominations between 1987 and 1999 (Cry Freedom, Glory, Malcolm X, The Hurricane). The underrated Hawke had starred in movies such as Reality Bites, Before Sunrise, Gattaca, and Hamlet before the turn of the century. But it took Antoine Fuqua’s (Southpaw, Tears of the Sun) gritty, determined, and so far over the top that it might be believable Training Day for these two Hollywood heavyweights to meet on the big screen for the first time. The result is the crowning acting achievement in the careers of each actor.
John Q (2002)
What was Denzel Washington thinking? Fresh off roles in 1998’s The Hurricane (Academy Award Winner – Lead Actor), the nationally recognized 2000’s Remember the Titans, and 2002’s Training Day (Academy Award Winner – Lead Actor), Denzel was arguably at the peak of his acting career. He likely commanded (or was close to it) more guaranteed money per film than any other actor in America. He probably was receiving dozens of roles at a single time. And yet he chose to accept the lead role in unproven Nick Cassavetes’s (Alpha Dog, She’s So Lovely) 2002’s John Q.
He Got Game (1998)
A few friends and I recently discussed movies we thought warranted a second watch. We debated whether a film aged like a fine wine or sour milk in the discussion. It meant if we thought a movie held up or was even deemed better years after its original release or if we didn’t believe it was all that good now when we once held it in high esteem. One of my friends said Terminator 2 aged like sour milk. Though I haven’t seen it a second time, this movie was so far ahead of its time in terms of technology back in 1991, but one I don’t doubt might be unwatchable 30 years later. The sour milk example I gave was The Great Outdoors, a movie that a 12-year-old me thought was hilarious when I watched in the theater, but one that I didn’t chuckle at once during my 2012 viewing. My example of a movie that aged like a fine wine was Apocolypse Now, a movie I didn’t necessarily love when I first saw it, but one I grew to appreciate as it and I aged. Spike Lee’s (Malcolm X, Do the Right Thing) He Got Game is a fine wine. I remember thinking it was “pretty decent” in 1998. It holds the test of time and is more applicable today, as we have seen in recent years, the sleaziness of college basketball recruiting.
Roman J. Israel Esq. (2017)
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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