No Church In the Wild
A few words about Denzel Washington
If you keep up with movie news, you’ve probably seen the trailer for Gladiator II by now. If you haven’t, you should. It looks, in a word: awesome.
The original Gladiator is a movie that some movie snobs like to pretend ain’t all that, and while it might not be the greatest movie ever made, and certainly didn’t deserve Best Picture that year (hello, Crouching Tiger), it’s kind of the ultimate epic that was ever destined for repeat viewings on cable. “Are you not entertained?!” Russell Crowe isn’t back for this one, by virtue of his character being dead and all. In his stead is Paul Mescal as Lucius Verus, the son of Connie Nielsen’s Lucilla and grandson of Marcus Aurelius. An heir to the empire who has been living in exile, Lucius is taken prisoner by the Roman army and made into a gladiator. And here’s where we get to the important part: He’s made into a gladiator by Denzel Washington.
Have you watched the trailer yet? Did you see how Paramount put a little tease in front of it that opens with Washington doing his trademark “ha ha HAA!” laugh? That’s a studio that understands the power Denzel has.
I’ve put forward a theory in recent years: There’s no such thing as a bad Denzel Washington movie, because any movie is automatically good if it has Denzel Washington in it.
A bold proclamation? Perhaps. But look through his IMDb page and tell me which movie you wouldn’t rewatch at least large chunks of if you came across it on TBS. A fool’s errand (and I will hear no argument).
As Jamelle Bouie asked yesterday on Bluesky (a Twitter clone I enjoy), is Denzel the greatest living Hollywood actor? Jamelle thinks so, and I would tend to agree. I might even go further and say he’s up there with the greatest Hollywood actors of all time, right alongside Cary Grant and Humphrey Bogart. The “Hollywood” element is important here. It’s possible none of these are the finest of performers on the most technical levels. Are they Marlon Brando? Are they Philip Seymour Hoffman? Getting into the nitty gritty of what makes quality acting is heavily fraught—check out Isaac Butler’s great book The Method to learn more about the history of acting’s evolution int he 20th century—but when we’re talking about Hollywood, there are considerations other than craft at play.
Denzel Washington is above all a movie star. The kind of actor who commands every frame through an alchemical combination of good looks, talent and unfailing charisma. At 69-years-old, his career has spanned TV, the stage and the big screen, and every time out he brings an undeniable magnetism of the kind that simply can’t be taught. You either have it or you don’t.
As many pointed out when the Gladiator II trailer dropped, it is a testament to Denzel’s unique star quality and abilities as a performer that he is able to play a Roman-era power broker while sounding like, as one person put it, “a corrupt cop from Yonkers.” Never mind the silliness of arguing a film set in ancient Rome should have everyone speaking with a British stage accent, the amazing thing about what Washington can do as an actor is make you believe in his characters without significant alteration to his actual person.
In Joel Coen’s The Tragedy of Macbeth, Denzel did modulate his voice a tad to wrap his mouth around Shakespeare’s verse, but he remains undeniably Denzel, even while delivering the play’s most famous monologue.
That performance as the Scottish general is, to my mind, one of Washington’s best (his true best is his turn as Malcolm X, of course), in large part because of how he moulds the character to suit his own style instead of the other way around. Here is a Macbeth beleaguered and fierce, whose physicality is at once a source of great awe and a mark of his vulnerability. Denzel inhabits all facets of the character within a recognizably human expression, where the flaws and failings that are his ultimate undoing are intimately woven into his commanding presence.
It’s his personability and charm, and his stoicism, too. You see it in everything from A Soldier’s Story to Mississippi Masala to Inside Man to The Equalizer 3. Denzel’s essence is unfailingly present in every performance, front and centre, no matter the role, no matter the genre, no matter the seriousness. The only thing separating a good Denzel performance from a great one is how well a movie is able to match what it is that he’s bringing. By the looks of the Gladiator II trailer, what he’s bringing is pure, uncut Denzel attitude, right down to his “my man!” mannerisms, and the movie seems to be going for the same grand sense of Hollywood fun and spectacle.
The only question is whether Ridley Scott can actually deliver, but to all the Ridley skeptics out there, I think Jesse Hawken put it best:
