Denzel Washington Ranked

Welcome to "Ranked", a weekly series where I rank a franchise or filmography from worst to best and hand out assorted related superlatives. This week, I'm profiling the work of Denzel Washington-whose latest project "Highest 2 Lowest" is now playing in theaters and will begin streaming on Apple TV+ on September 5.

Denzel Washington's Filmography Ranked:

28.Roman J. Israel, Esq. (C-)

27.The Equalizer 2 (C)

26.Fences (C+)

25.The Bone Collector (B-)

24.John Q (B-)

23.Glory (B-)

22.The Equalizer (B-)

21.The Equalizer 3 (B-)

20.Deja Vu (B-)

19.The Little Things (B-)

18.Gladiator II (B)

17.Devil in a Blue Dress (B)

16.The Taking of Pelham 123 (B)

15.Mississippi Masala (B)

14.Cry Freedom (B)

13.Unstoppable (B)

12.Safe House (B)

11.Philadelphia (B)

10.2 Guns (B)

9.He Got Game (B)

8.Man on Fire (B+)

7.Flight (B+)

6.Inside Man (B+)

5.The Book of Eli (A-)

4.The Magnificent Seven (A-)

3.American Gangster (A-)

2.Remember the Titans (A)

1.Training Day (A+) 

Top Dog: Training Day (2001)

During an interview with Chicago-based entertainment reporter Jake Hamilton (aka Jake's Takes) for Highest 2 Lowest, Washington expressed how little his pair of Oscar wins mean to him and how he doesn't care if he wins another one before his career ends. They might not mean much to him, but his most recent win for Training Day sure as shit means something to me. What Washington does on screen as corrupt LAPD narcotics detective Alonzo Harris is the kind of acting that will be studied, dissected and praised for as long as the film remains available for consumption. All of the choices Washington made as a performer allowed Harris to become this magnetic, repulsive, funny and horrifying monster that immediately entered the pantheon of greatest screen villains of all time. There's enough grit and gusto behind Training Day to ensure that it would've been great with anybody playing the role of Harris, but with Washington's full-fledged embodiment of the character, it became the unshakable stuff of legend.   

Bottom Feeder: Roman J. Israel, Esq. (2017)

The first of the pair of duds Dan Gilroy has followed up his masterful debut Nightcrawler with, Roman J. Israel, Esq. is a clumsy, deeply stupid mess of a legal drama that would've been a complete piece of shit if not for Washington's exceptional performance as the title character. 

Most Underrated: The Magnificent Seven (2016)

While I'll stop short of saying that it reaches the heights of The Coen Brothers' True Grit remake, The Magnificent Seven is a great remake of a classic western in its own right. Antoine Fuqua displays a level of joy behind the camera that had alluded him since the days of Shooter as he bring a playful giddiness to this action-packed revenge story about a ragtag group of hired guns (Washington, Chris Pratt, Ethan Hawke, Vincent D'Onofrio, Byung-hun Lee, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Martin Sensmeier) tasked by a young widower (Haley Bennett) with liberating a frontier town that's been taken over by a sadistic robber baron (Peter Sarsgaard), which makes this an effortlessly fun, energetic affair that flies by. Right now, I'd say this is neck-and-neck with The Harder They Fall for the title of Best Western of the Last Decade.   

Most Overrated: Fences (2016) 

There's no denying that the performances in the long gestating film version of the late August Wilson's acclaimed play Fences are sensational-particularly in the cases of Washington and Viola Davis, who won her first Oscar for her work in the role of Rose Lee Maxson. These acting masterclasses just happen to be in service of a shamelessly melodramatic story that only gets more emotionally manipulative and silly as it goes along. I've gone onto like both subsequent film adaptations of Wilson's work (Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, The Piano Lesson), so my issues seem to be just with the story that Fences tells and not his work on the whole.