Denzel Washington’s been making us look good at the movies for forty years now, but here’s the thing – we keep talking about the same five films. Training Day, Glory, Malcolm X. Yeah, they’re masterpieces. We get it. But the man’s made something like sixty movies, and some of his best work is sitting there collecting dust while everyone argues about whether The Equalizer 3 was necessary. (It wasn’t, but that’s another story.)

The 90s Gems Nobody Remembers

Let’s start with Devil in a Blue Dress, because honestly, this one drives me nuts. It came out in 1995, the same year as Heat and Se7en, and it just got buried. Denzel plays Easy Rawlins, a Black WWII vet turned detective in 1948 Los Angeles, and the whole thing feels like Chinatown if Chinatown actually cared about what redlining did to real neighborhoods. Carl Franklin directed it, and the atmosphere is so thick you can taste the bourbon and betrayal.

The movie flopped. Made about $16 million domestic. And I’ve never understood why, except that maybe America in 1995 wasn’t ready for a Black detective story that didn’t center white comfort. Walter Mosley wrote a whole series of Easy Rawlins novels – there could’ve been five sequels by now. Instead, we got… well, we didn’t get them.

Mississippi Masala is even more obscure, and it came out way back in 1991 when Denzel was still building his resume. Mira Nair directed this thing, and it’s a love story between Denzel’s character – a carpet cleaner in Mississippi – and a young South Asian woman whose family was expelled from Uganda. It’s messy and specific and deals with anti-Blackness in immigrant communities, which is not exactly what Hollywood was exploring three decades ago. Or now, if I’m being honest.

The chemistry between Denzel and Sarita Choudhury is electric. But the movie made no money, got decent reviews, and then basically disappeared. You can’t even stream it easily. That’s a crime.

A Soldier’s Story Deserves Better

Before Denzel was Denzel, he was in A Soldier’s Story (1984), and if you haven’t seen it, you’re missing the foundation of everything he became. It’s a murder mystery set on a segregated Army base during World War II, adapted from a Pulitzer-winning play. The movie is essentially a courtroom drama mixed with a whodunit, and Denzel plays a brash, complicated private who resents the Black sergeant everyone’s investigating.

This was only his third movie. He’s young, he’s angry, and you can see him figuring out how to take up space on screen. It got an Oscar nomination for Best Picture – and then everybody forgot about it. When people talk about Denzel’s early work, they jump straight to Cry Freedom and Glory. A Soldier’s Story shaped him, though. You can see it.

The Quiet Power of Antwone Fisher

Here’s where it gets interesting. In 2002, Denzel directed his first movie – Antwone Fisher – and also played a supporting role as a Navy psychiatrist helping a young sailor (Derek Luke) work through severe childhood trauma. The movie is tender. That’s the word. Tender. And it’s not a word you’d usually associate with Denzel, who’s built a career on intensity and controlled fury.

But this movie? It’s about listening. It’s about making space for someone else’s pain. Denzel the director shows a sensitivity that Denzel the action star doesn’t always get to express, and the result is one of the most emotionally honest films about therapy and healing I’ve seen. Did it light up the box office? No. Did it win Oscars? Also no. Does it matter? Absolutely.

What’s wild is that Denzel has only directed three movies total – Antwone Fisher, The Great Debaters, and Fences. He could’ve kept going, but he didn’t. Maybe because the industry didn’t make it easy, maybe because he likes acting more. Either way, we’re missing out.

When Denzel Goes Full Shakespeare

The Tragedy of Macbeth came out in 2021, and I’m including it here because somehow people still aren’t talking about it enough. Joel Coen (without his brother, for the first time) directed this stark, black-and-white adaptation, and Denzel plays Macbeth like a man who’s already tired before the witches even show up. He’s not young. He’s not striving. He’s desperate in a completely different way than most Macbeths, and it’s devastating.

“The film strips Shakespeare down to shadow and stone – and Denzel meets it with a performance that feels less like ambition and more like inevitability.”

Frances McDormand plays Lady Macbeth, and together they’re this aging couple trying to grab power before time runs out. It’s not the bombastic Macbeth you expect. It’s small and claustrophobic and weird, and Denzel leans all the way into the strangeness. The movie got decent reviews and an Oscar nomination for Denzel, but it came and went on Apple TV+ without much fanfare. That’s a shame, because this is some of the most interesting work he’s done in years.

The Tony Scott Stuff That Isn’t Man on Fire

Everyone remembers Man on Fire. Fewer people remember Unstoppable, the 2010 Tony Scott joint where Denzel plays a veteran train engineer trying to stop a runaway locomotive loaded with toxic chemicals. And look – it’s not high art. It’s a movie about a train that won’t stop. But it’s also a tightly wound thriller with real stakes, and Denzel brings so much lived-in competence to the role that you believe every second of it. Scott's instinct for propulsive action put him in the same conversation as Spielberg at his most efficient – What 5 Movies Taught Us About Indiana Jones breaks down that exact formula.

Chris Pine plays the young hotshot conductor, and their dynamic is the whole movie. It made $167 million worldwide, so it wasn’t exactly a flop, but it’s rarely mentioned when people talk about Denzel’s best work. Maybe because it’s “just” an action movie. But Tony Scott knew how to make those sing, and this was his last film before he died. That alone makes it worth revisiting.

What We Keep Missing

The thing about Denzel is that he’s never stopped taking risks. He’s done Shakespeare and schlock, directed intimate dramas and starred in crowd-pleasing thrillers. But we – the audience, the critics, the culture – tend to flatten him into Greatest Living Actor mode and then only celebrate the obvious peaks. Training Day. Malcolm X. Fences. All deserved, don’t get me wrong. Hollywood's risk aversion has only gotten worse in the streaming era, where algorithms increasingly dictate Why AI Applications Backfire in creative industries that used to trust human judgment.

But Devil in a Blue Dress showed us a whole detective franchise we never got. Mississippi Masala explored interracial dynamics most movies still won’t touch. Antwone Fisher revealed a filmmaker who understands restraint. And Macbeth reminded us he can still surprise us, even now.

Maybe the problem isn’t that these movies are forgotten. Maybe it’s that we’re too comfortable with the version of Denzel we’ve already decided on. The intense one. The Oscar-winning one. The safe bet. Meanwhile, the man keeps showing us something different – and we keep looking past it.