The engross­ing ​’90s non­sense of Den­zel Washington

Den­zel Wash­ing­ton is a mighty actor, in pos­ses­sion of a grav­i­tas most can only dream of, more than able to lend his tal­ent to the works of Shake­speare or por­tray­ing major his­tor­i­cal fig­ures like Mal­colm X. Yet for decades now he’s also seemed to rel­ish work­ing on mate­r­i­al that should be well beneath some­one of his stature, enjoy­ing the task of pulling ropey scripts and con­cepts up to his lev­el. Ear­ly reviews have wide­ly deemed him the best part of Rid­ley Scott’s uneven Glad­i­a­tor II; his his­to­ry of ele­vat­ing the source mate­r­i­al is long-standing.

Though he came to fame in the eight­ies, going from a lead on TV med­ical dra­ma St. Else­where to an Oscar win­ner for Glo­ry in just sev­en short years, the nineties were when Wash­ing­ton tru­ly became a megas­tar. The decade gave us his tow­er­ing turns in Mal­colm X, Crim­son Tide, Philadel­phia, and The Hur­ri­cane – big, mus­cu­lar movies, often cen­tered around his com­mand­ing pres­ence. Scat­tered among those, how­ev­er, were a hand­ful that were just…silly. But those movies, as much as the ones that won him all his deserved acclaim, show why his star has remained ascen­dant for so many years.

In the first, 1991’s Ric­o­chet, Wash­ing­ton is a cop – Nick Styles – who puts psy­cho­path­ic killer Earl Tal­bot Blake (John Lith­gow) in jail. Eight years lat­er, Blake man­ages to bust out. He heads straight for Styles – now an Assis­tant Dis­trict Attor­ney – with revenge on his mind Ricochet’s premise is con­ven­tion­al, but the vio­lence is intense – at one point, a man gets a cir­cu­lar saw straight through the bel­ly. In true 1990s style, almost every bloody act is accom­pa­nied by a glee­ful, pro­fane wit­ti­cism; it’s the kind of movie where an impale­ment is met with ​“You got the point now, don’t you?”

In his entire fil­mog­ra­phy, it’s hard to pick out a scene that more encap­su­lates Washington’s charis­mat­ic resplen­dence than when he first arrests Lithgow’s vil­lain at a night­time car­ni­val. Styles gets a gun on Blake, but when an unaware woman steps out of a near­by port-a-pot­ty, Blake takes her hostage. To per­suade him to release her, Styles makes a show of dis­arm­ing him­self, even strip­ping down to his box­ers to prove he has no hid­den weapon or armour, all the while try­ing to calm the ter­ri­fied woman. Blake then push­es her aside and launch­es him­self at Styles – who some­how has man­aged to hide a gun, and man­ages to sub­due the criminal.

Ric­o­chet is a ludi­crous movie, yet it makes Washington’s charm tex­tu­al in a way that would set the scene for many a future film of his. And four years lat­er, things got sil­li­er still for him in Virtuosity.

Here Wash­ing­ton plays Park­er Barnes: a for­mer cop con­vict­ed for killing the man who mur­dered his wife and daugh­ter. Barnes and oth­er con­victs have been part of test­ing for a vir­tu­al real­i­ty train­ing pro­gramme meant to pit police against SID 6.7 (Rus­sell Crowe), an AI pro­grammed on the per­son­al­i­ties of 200 ser­i­al killers – includ­ing the one who killed Barnes’ fam­i­ly. When a rene­gade tech­ni­cian brings SID 6.7 into the real world, Barnes is the only one who can stop him.

Rus­sell Crowe has by far the flashiest role in Vir­tu­os­i­ty, and he sure does enjoy it, ooz­ing mer­ry malev­o­lence, and mak­ing a three-course meal out of each of his cru­el taunts (12 years lat­er the two actors would face off again in Amer­i­can Gang­ster, where Wash­ing­ton got the showier vil­lain part). Between Crowe’s ham­my psy­chopa­thy and the movie’s fas­ci­na­tion with VR – the effects now look endear­ing­ly dat­ed but were at the time con­sid­ered cut­ting edge – it’s just Washington’s steady per­for­mances as the griev­ing, furi­ous hero that gives Vir­tu­os­i­ty any kind of emo­tion­al weight. His will­ing­ness to put the charis­ma on a low boil, to cede the humour and spec­ta­cle to Crowe while he deals with the heavy stuff, is almost sole­ly respon­si­ble for keep­ing the whole thing from burst­ing apart at the seams.

Wash­ing­ton played a police offi­cer once again in the final film of his nineties tril­o­gy of non­sense – 1998’s Fall­en. Though his char­ac­ter, John Hobbes, watch­es ser­i­al killer Edgar Reese (Elias Koteas) put to death, some­how that doesn’t stop the string of mur­ders car­ried out to Reese’s macabre modus operan­di. At first Hobbes and his fel­low cops assume there’s a copy­cat on the loose. Before long, he learns the real cul­prit lies in a dif­fer­ent realm entirely.

The full absur­di­ty of Fall­en takes a while to make itself known. Direct­ed by Gre­go­ry Hoblit, straight after his huge­ly suc­cess­ful Pri­mal Fear, and co-star­ring Don­ald Suther­land, John Good­man, and James Gan­dolfi­ni, it looks com­par­a­tive­ly classy next to the twin luna­cies of Ric­o­chet and Virtuosity…until it’s revealed that it’s Reese’s demon­ic spir­it con­tin­u­ing his mur­der spree, using unwit­ting bod­ies (main­ly human, some­times feline!) as his ves­sels, and pass­ing between them via touch. For the remain­der of the movie, Wash­ing­ton effec­tive­ly finds him­self play­ing tag with a demon.

Even after Fall­en has unveiled the heights of its silli­ness, Wash­ing­ton remains com­mand­ing. In the scene where he’s told what’s real­ly going on, he moves from ​“Oh, come on!” scep­ti­cism to whole-heart­ed belief in a mat­ter of sec­onds, mak­ing his per­son­al change of mind con­vinc­ing, and (at least tem­porar­i­ly) bring­ing us along with him. It may be a pre­pos­ter­ous movie, but it’s a mas­ter­ful performance.

Washington’s habit of mix­ing high and low art expand­ed well out beyond the nineties, most notably in his fre­quent col­lab­o­ra­tions with direc­tor Tony Scott. Across five films, from 1995 to 2010, the actor time trav­elled, stopped run­away trains, and saved the day in count­less oth­er ways, ele­vat­ing schlocky mate­r­i­al into the stuff of poet­ry. After that came The Equal­iz­er movies, where Wash­ing­ton took his ex-CIA agent on a sur­pris­ing­ly mov­ing emo­tion­al arc, through a myr­i­ad of vio­lent, often out­ra­geous set pieces. Time and again, from the nineties to the present day, he’s made even the most throw­away of movies feel utter­ly gripping.

In a very real sense, mak­ing non­sense films like Ric­o­chet, Vir­tu­os­i­ty, and Fall­en emo­tion­al­ly cred­i­ble is every inch as chal­leng­ing as the trick­i­est Shake­spear­i­an solil­o­quy. That Wash­ing­ton excels at both is a major part of what makes him such a peer­less screen pres­ence and us in the audi­ence so lucky to have him.