The 25 Greatest Actors of the 21st Century (So Far) – The New York Times

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A. O. SCOTT We wrangled and argued about every other slot on the list, but there was no hesitation or debate about this one.

Denzel Washington is beyond category: a screen titan who is also a subtle and sensitive craftsman, with serious old-school stage training and blazing movie-star presence. He can do Shakespeare and August Wilson, villainy or action heroism. He’s also one of the supreme regular-guy actors. Who can forget his embattled working stiffs in “Unstoppable” (2010) and “The Taking of Pelham 123” (2009), a pair of big, noisy train-themed movies directed by Tony Scott? Neither one is a masterpiece, but I never get tired of watching Washington on the job.

MANOHLA DARGIS He makes the job — by which I mean acting — look like breathing. There’s a reason he was perfect as Easy Rawlins in “Devil in a Blue Dress,” an early defining role. Since then, he has played a lot of characters who embody law or criminality, and some who exist in the space dividing the two. Along the way, he has become the dominant totem of a certain kind of male authority, like John Wayne and Clint Eastwood before him. Washington can express anguished vulnerability, but he can tower like a colossus, looming over worlds like an Old Testament patriarch — it’s extraordinary given the representations of Black masculinity onscreen not long ago.

SCOTT That authority is credible even when the movies are … less so. “The Book of Eli” (2010)? “The Equalizer” (2014)? “Man on Fire” (2004)? One of the things I love most about him is how magnificently he plays men who don’t seem to require or even deserve love. Think of Whip Whitaker in “Flight” (2012), a prodigiously skilled airline pilot who is also an epic train wreck. Not a nice guy, but as full and complex and vividly realized a human being as you will ever see on a movie screen.

DARGIS Like all stars, Washington’s acting feels inextricable with his charisma, a combination that’s seductive but can overwhelm movies, like Antoine Fuqua’s violent potboiler “Training Day” (2001). Washington is sensational as a bad detective: He’s loose, sexy, frightening but so much bigger than life that he shrinks the movie. In “Flight,” his magnetism deepens his character’s tragedy; it gives his walk swagger yet it’s also part of his crumbling facade. Few roles give Washington as much to work with, certainly not the movies with two of his favorite directors, Fuqua and Scott, who create a lot of commotion that Washington settles into — and centers — very comfortably.

SCOTT Maybe one measure of his mightiness is how consistently he’s better than the movies he’s in. Amid the extensive run of excellent work — the coaches and cops, the gangsters and lawyers — there are a few monuments that show this towering talent in full. Malcolm X is one, and Troy Maxson in “Fences” (2016) is another. There is so much pain and pride in that performance, which somehow measures the weight of American racism on a single person’s body and soul, without turning that person into a symbol of anything. The way Washington walks into that movie, his shoulders swinging with an athlete’s power, his frame dented by a lifetime of toil, is a moment of pure carnal eloquence, matched by the stream of vernacular poetry that comes out of his mouth.

DARGIS Well, transcending your movie has long been a hallmark of real stardom! Actors choose roles for all sorts of reasons — age, schedule, taste, comfort, pay — and race matters, always. Washington likes playing goal-oriented characters and men who make a serious impression, with a gun, physical extremes or words. He likes to go big. He could make art films and provocative little indies but doesn’t. Maybe he isn’t interested; certainly he doesn’t need to. He is Denzel Washington, after all, a star whose career — in its longevity and dominance — is a corrective and rebuke to the racist industry in which he works. I imagine that he’s doing exactly what he wants.

Stream or rent “Flight,” “Training Day” and more on most major platforms.