Man on Hollywood Fire

He is simply a confident bad ass. This is how most people would describe the acting abilities of Denzel Washington. Washington never seems to disappoint in any role he plays, and there have been several. However, in nearly every role he either displays extreme confidence or an extreme lack of care and bad ass attitude. Most of the time he possess in both in his roles and that is what makes him one of the most successful actors today.

Compliments of IMDb

On of his earlier roles involved teaming up with former NBA star Ray Allen. The movie was called He Got Game, and it followed the life of a young basketball star as he struggles to make a college decision on where he will play basketball. His father, who is played by Washington, attempts to influence him in this decision in return for a shorter jail sentence. The greatness in how Washington plays his role is supported by the fact of how invested he seems in helping his son make a decision. It appears as if Washington is truly in jail and that this is his last attempt to both reduce his sentence and connect with his son.

However, his first true masterpiece and Oscar worthy performance came in the form of a movie called Training Day. Washington played a bad ass cop who is confident in his abilities to manipulate people and get them to do his bidding. The story centers on a young rookie’s training day. Washington leads the rookie down a dark and dangerous path and this creates for an extremely vibrant plot line. This is perhaps one of Washington’s best movies and a trailer for it can be seen here.

His next major film was Man on Fire. The one true distinction about this film is that it portrayed Washington as a man who finds purpose in his life. Even though he still kills multiple people along the way, he seems to be truly invested in saving the life of a little girl whom he is the bodyguard of.

More recently, Washington has played some more diverse roles. One of his more interesting ones was the role of a drunken pilot in the movie Flight. After his plane goes down, Washington’s character is questioned about his intoxication and must travel down a dark path to redeem himself. In order to prepare for this movie, Washington actually spent countless hours in the cockpit of an airplane. In reality, he never had to fly one. However, he did this to familiarize himself with the controls and thus create more authenticity. He even used a flight bag from a real life pilot in order to further the authenticity.

Compliments of Salon.com

Overall, Washington has surely played some high profile roles. However, what makes him great is not the role, but how he plays it. He approaches each one differently even if it may not appear so. There is not a general genre that he participates in. He simply takes whatever role interests him. Most often this just happens to involve him being a bad ass of some sort.