He got game: Denzel Washington's 21 best performances ranked

Unstoppable would mark the last of five collaboration between Washington and director Tony Scott before the latter’s death in 2012. At least they crafted one more great action movie together, with Washington starring alongside Chris Pine as a man charged with stopping a runaway freight train. It’s a much better Speed sequel than the actual Speed 2.

The story of how a Sony Pictures security guard became the screenwriter of Denzel Washington’s feature directorial debut is arguably more memorable than the film they eventually made. But Antwone Fisher is not without its charms. Most of those charms come from then-newcomer Derek Luke’s star-making performance in the title role and his charming repartee with former model-turned-actor Joy Bryant as Fisher’s girlfriend. Washington anchors this heartfelt biopic as psychiatrist Jerome Davenport, who works with Fisher in a Good Will Hunting-esque fashion to help the young Naval officer make peace with the trauma that helped make him the man he is today.

In Flight, Washington brings together his latter-day action heroics and his gift for brooding drama to his role as an airline pilot suffering from deep and tragic character flaws. It’s a rare treat to see him playing someone so erratic and unreliable, though as a viewer you always feel like you’re in safe hands when Washington is at the controls.

In American Gangster, Washington is surprisingly winning as a bad guy—in this case, real-life Harlem drug kingpin Frank Lucas. Actually, the methodical, low-profile, and quiet nature of Lucas’ ruthlessness makes him a natural for Washington in his first collaboration with Tony Scott’s brother, Ridley.

Remember The Titans, one of Washington and producer Jerry Bruckheimer’s biggest hits, is a load-bearing column of sports moviedom. Based on a true story, director Boaz Yakin’s four-quadrant hit follows Virginia high school football coach Herman Boone (Washington) as he works to integrate his team of Black and white players in 1971. Written by the late Gregory Allen Howard (who also co-wrote Michael Mann’s Ali), the screenplay not only provides the foundation for an exceptional sports movie, it builds upon it with the hopeful message that the most worthwhile path to success is one where everyone works together—no matter the color of their skin.

Julia Roberts and Denzel Washington, two of the ’90s biggest stars, headline the late, great Alan J. Pakula’s The Pelican Brief, an adaptation of the popular page-turner by John Grisham. All the tension Pakula brought to All The President’s Men is super-charged here in a thriller that sees Washington’s intrepid reporter on the search for the author of the titular brief (Roberts) before she becomes the target of both an assassin and a White House desperate to silence the explosive truths she has uncovered. Washington and Roberts have chemistry for days in what has become a slightly forgotten movie on both of their resumes but is ripe for revisiting.

In the opening moments of director Norman Jewison’s The Hurricane, wrongfully convicted boxer Ruben “Hurricane” Carter (Washington) wads up a clump of toilet paper into a makeshift mouthguard in preparation for what Carter fears is a pending assault by prison guards in his cell. It’s a small but formative moment in another gripping performance that earned the actor his third Oscar nomination. With a bifurcated flashback structure that drops in on Carter as a troubled youth before showing us the events that lead to his conviction for a murder he didn’t commit, The Hurricane can’t quite shake hands with being both biopic and legal drama as it chronicles Carter’s efforts to use his book and others’ help to win back his freedom. But Washington’s dynamic, focused acting here more than makes up for the script’s shortcomings and ranks up there with his work in Malcom X.

Inside Man is Washington’s third collaboration with director Spike Lee and it’s their most commercial project yet—as well as their most thrilling. Written by Russell Gerwitz—it was one of the buzziest feature film spec scripts of the early aughts—Inside Man centers on an intrepid New York cop (Washington) racing against the clock to save a bank’s hostages from their enigmatic captor (a never-better Clive Owen) who seems more concerned with what valuable, and potentially incriminating, secrets the bank holds than the money in its vault. Lee’s signature visual touches (like his patented actors-on-dolly move) liven up the script’s more rote “cops and robbers” trappings, with Washington especially game to carry the story and the audience to the film’s climactic big twist.

The Tragedy Of Macbeth isn’t Washington’s first tour-de-force performance in a work by William Shakespeare, but it is his first with a Coen brother at the helm. Director Joel Coen stepped out solo from his brother Ethan to direct Oscar-winners Washington and Frances McDormand in this stark, black-and-white (and downright unsettling) adaptation of the famous drama, with Washington filling the titular king’s tragic shoes. Heavy weighs the crown indeed as Washington harnesses all his considerable talent and pours it into his take on the Scottish general and murderer of King Duncan. The stark, stage-bound production only makes Washington’s performance, and the story’s supernatural underpinnings, resonate all the more.

Director Ed Zwick’s Courage Under Fire proved to be a respectable earner and an effective piece of counter-programming in the summer of 1996, which is no small feat considering it arrived in theaters nine days after the enormous blockbuster Independence Day. Clearly, audiences found something to like in this wartime drama about a disgraced military officer (played by Washington, in one of his more compelling roles) investigating whether a fallen soldier (Meg Ryan) deserves to become the first woman to earn the Congressional Medal of Honor. Washington’s investigator leads the audience through a Rashomon-esque journey to the truth, with a roster of unreliable key witnesses including Lou Diamond Phillips and a very young Matt Damon. They help elevate the film’s occasional melodramatic contrivances into the type of adult drama Hollywood regretfully doesn’t make anymore.

Washington has considerable sparkage with co-star Sarita Choudhury in Mississippi Masala, a 1991 hidden gem from director Mira Nair. Cultures clash and relationships are tested in this emotionally honest drama set in rural Mississippi and centering on the interracial romance between a Black man (Washington) and an Indian-American played by And Just Like That…’s Choudhury. Their on-screen chemistry is a powerful draw here, as is Nair’s sensitive and nuanced depiction of their blossoming but challenging relationship.

Spike Lee’s He Got Game is effective as a satire of the Black athlete’s collegiate experience, but it’s arguably more powerful as a family drama about a father (Washington) and his basketball prodigy son (Ray Allen). Torn apart by a tragedy that put Washington’s once-abusive alcoholic dad in jail, He Got Game centers on the father’s selfish pursuit to convince his high school-aged son to sign with a college that will result in his early release from prison. But it turns into a compassionate—and, at times, painful—journey toward forgiveness and redemption for past sins in the face of future glory.

Washington’s supporting turn in A Soldier’s Story, the underrated 1984 legal drama set near the end of World War II, is a brief but memorable one. You can’t help but miss him whenever he’s not on screen in director Norman Jewison’s slow-burn adaptation of Charles Fuller’s Pulitzer Prize-winning A Soldier’s Play. When an untested and Black JAG officer is sent to investigate the murder of a Black sergeant within a racist and segregated regiment of the U.S. Army based in Jim Crow Louisiana, the search for the truth reveals the hate-fueled efforts of those willing to cover up the crime. Washington emerges as a standout amongst a compelling ensemble that includes Robert Townsend, Patti LaBelle, and David Alan Grier.

Almost 30 years after its release, what started as one of Washington’s earliest box office disappointments has since become appreciated as one of the actor’s best films. Based on the book of the same name by Walter Mosley, Devil In A Blue Dress is a twisty and exceptional piece of L.A. Confidential-esque noir with a mostly Black cast. As war veteran-turned-private investigator “Easy” Rawlins, Washington does an excellent job as the audience’s surrogate through the movie’s 1940s-set story about a detective who struggles to piece together what two warring candidates for mayor of Los Angeles have to do with the titular missing woman (a steely femme fatale played by Jennifer Beals). Director Carl Franklin’s atmospheric depiction of post-war L.A. pairs extremely well with Washington’s full-throated commitment to Mosley’s iconic gumshoe. There are currently 15 Easy Rawlins books, so how about a few more big-screen adaptations, Hollywood?

Man On Fire, director Tony Scott’s frame-rate changing, freeze-frame happy sensory assault, is one of the best (and most ambitious) films to result from the late director’s memorable partnership with Washington. While Scott and his visual choices at times get too much in the way of a very simple story of redemption by way of revenge, the talented filmmaker knows to get out his leading man’s way. Here, Denzel plays Creasy, a former CIA operative turned hired gun and bodyguard for the Mexico-bound Ramos family and their precocious daughter, Peta (a scary good Dakota Fanning). When a kidnapping ring snatches Peta from her “Creasy Bear” and leaves him for dead, the broken-not-sprained protector’s love for the child is only rivaled by his gun-fueled need to use what life he has left to get her back. Denzel invests Creasy with a seemingly permanent “dark night of the soul” despair that only lifts when in the presence of his young charge. And it gets increasingly darker when he confronts the kidnappers with a variety of weapons and explosive devices. It’s an incredibly haunted and haunting performance that only a movie star of Denzel’s caliber could pull off.

Based on August Wilson’s award-winning Broadway play, which Washington and his Oscar-winning co-star Viola Davis previously headlined, Fences is a showcase for Washington’s talents as both director and actor. As a neglectful, womanizing husband with a breathtaking drinking problem, Washington plays a man who thinks he can coast through life on his charms without tripping over the considerable cracks and emotional detritus in his life. It’s another powerhouse performance, full of volatility and vulnerability, that wouldn’t be half as successful without Davis’ career-best work to bounce off of.

Crimson Tide, the first team-up between Denzel Washington and the late director Tony Scott, is one of the ’90s best action movies—as well as a top-tier entry into the submarine thriller genre. Gene Hackman and Washington go head-to-head aboard a nuclear submarine that’s the only thing standing between us and World War III in this taut, character-driven hit from the summer of 1995. Hackman’s Cold War veteran Captain Ramsey wants to launch missiles on Russia after receiving an incomplete Emergency Action Message that implies their enemy may be prepared to do the same. Washington’s more nuanced Executive Officer, Commander Hunter, would rather get an updated transmission than engage in nuclear holocaust. Their clash in command styles and interpretation sparks a mutiny full of white-knuckle tension and intelligent thrills, all driven by two Oscar-winners at the height of their acting powers.

Washington won his first Academy Award for his sensational supporting turn in Glory, a powerful Civil War saga from his future Courage Under Fire helmer, Ed Zwick. Washington’s searing performance as Trip, a fiery-tempered slave-turned-soldier, is shockingly raw and physical in a way Washington has seldom been before or since. Prior to Glory, Washington had appeared in a handful of films, like A Soldier’s Story and Cry Freedom, which he shot while still on the TV series St. Elsewhere. But Glory was a major message to Hollywood that his days of grinding it out on a TV series were forever behind him.

Audiences were so used to seeing Washington play noble and stiff (as in 2000’s Remember The Titans) that it was a liberating joy to see him cut loose and play evil, as he does in Training Day. In the film, he commands the screen as an LAPD cop trying to corrupt rookie officer Ethan Hawke during his evaluation to become a detective. His reward for going over to the dark side: The first Best Actor Oscar for an African-American since Sidney Poitier won for Lilles Of The Field in 1963.

In Philadelphia, the late director Jonathan Demme’s canny casting made Tom Hanks—previously known as a comedic actor—the sympathetic AIDS patient, but the film wouldn’t have resonated as deeply without the equally smart casting of Washington as Hanks’ everyman, homophobic lawyer. Washington—who was not even Oscar nominated for his performance—stands in for the general audience as he learns about the realities of living with AIDS, as well as why it’s wrong to judge people by their sexual preference.

One of the Academy Awards’ most glaring oversights was Washington not taking home a more-than-deserved Oscar for this career-best performance in Malcolm X. This epic, underrated biopic is the best of Washington’s four collaborations with Spike Lee (the others being He Got Game, Inside Man, and Mo’ Better Blues). In Malcolm X, Washington grandly embodies the late Muslim preacher as he evolves over 20 years from casual street hustler to righteous separatist leader to enlightened anti-racist. It’s not the last time the star would be robbed of an Oscar, but it is the one that hurts the most—even three decades later.