Denzel Washington: 5 Awesome Performances And 5 That Sucked

1. Det. Alonzo Harris - Training Day

We doubt anybody in their right mind's gonna dispute this, but let's just go ahead and make the argument anyway, just for the fun of it. Washington's turn as Detective Alonzo Harris, the corrupt cop who's charged with showing Ethan Hawke's rookie Officer Jake Hoyt exactly how life is as part of the LAPD narcotics division, isn't the most complex character he's ever played. It's not the best written, nor the most fleshed out, and it's probably not the best film he's ever appeared in, either (it's almost certainly the best thing director Antoine Fuqua will ever do, mind, since his most recent success was Olympus Has Fallen). Wait wait, seriously, just hear us out. What Detective Alonzo Harris is, is an iconic film character who will live on throughout the annals of cinematic history. Malcolm X and Philadelphia were incredibly important historical documents, Flight is an amazingly multi-faceted performance, and Devil In A Blue Dress is a severely underrated genre classic. Nobody's doubting his acting chops, or the quality of the characters, in those movies. But none of them have introduced the world to such an enigmatic, charismatic, and downright terrifying character as Harris. He's got it right during his manic monologue at the film's climax: King Kong ain't got sh*t on him. He's a larger-than-life monster who escapes the trappings of his world and enters ours, an archetype made flesh, symbolic of all crooked cops who've appeared in films before and since. All of whom pale in comparison because, obviously, Harris is the zenith of the crooked cop. He's a slippery character, one who constantly makes moral justifications to himself and acts like he's above everyone, when really he's been the villain of the piece all along. That subtle shift is thanks in no small part to Washington's acting, as he pulls what could have been a pantomime villain on the page into an all-too-real example of how power corrupts. He's a symbol of everything wrong with the American justice system, and a product of it. Good taste in music, mind. Not that all Denzel performances are created equal...