Denzel Washington's Best Movie According To Rotten Tomatoes

Denzel Washington is about as accomplished an actor as you can get. Not only does the man exude effortless on-screen charisma in a way few others have, he's proven he can play pretty much anything you throw at him. From an unstoppable action hero in the "Equalizer" movies to a troubled, brooding Shakespearean general in the expressionist nightmare that was Joel Cohen's "The Tragedy of Macbeth," Denzel can simply do it all.

Now, it seems Washington will make yet another big impression in "Gladiator 2," with the actor set to play Macrinus, a power broker and arms dealer who aids Paul Mescal's Lucius Verus II in his quest to topple Rome. It should be yet another triumph for Washington, who no matter what he's in, seems like one of the safest bets a director can make.

With this kind of distinguished career, it's pretty much impossible to pick just one film as the actor's best. We're also talking about a guy who's been in the industry for almost five decades, producing multiple box office hits and critically acclaimed projects throughout. As always, though, that hasn't stopped Rotten Tomatoes from ranking the man's oeuvre, and Washington's highest-rated movie on the site might just surprise you.

For /Film's ranking of the best Denzel Washington films, we put Spike Lee's "Malcom X" in the top spot. The sweeping 202-minute epic wasn't just the first film backed by a major studio to tell the life story of a Black leader, it was a triumph for both Lee and Washington and felt like a culmination of all the times the two ever had, or ever would, work together. For his performance in the title role, Denzel was nominated for an Academy Award in 1992, which he lost to Al Pacino for "Scent of a Woman." But by that point, Denzel already had an Oscar to his name.

The actor previously won a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for his role in Edward Zwick's 1989 Civil War drama, "Glory." The film, which also starred Matthew Broderick, Morgan Freeman, and Cary Elwes, and didn't cut any corners when it came to authenticity in its retelling of the story of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, one of the Union's earliest Black regiments. Denzel played Silas Trip, an escaped slave who becomes a private in the regiment, and though it was a relatively small role, it was obviously enough to capture the Academy's attention, and as it turns out, enough to gain favor with the almighty Tomatometer.

In Rotten Tomatoes ranking of Washington's greatest films, "Glory" comes in at the top spot, with a critic score of 95% and an audience score of 93%. But as any film fan should know by now, these seemingly simple ratings can be quite misleading.

Rotten Tomatoes has decreed that there are only two perfect war movies, and "Glory" isn't quite good enough to beat "Grave of the Fireflies" or "A Man Escaped." But it is good enough to be Denzel Washington's best film, apparently. There's no doubt it's one of his best, especially since "Glory" came it at number 17 on /Film's ranking of Washington's films. But this is, of course, all subjective. What's more, it's worth bearing in mind the intricacies and vagaries of Rotten Tomatoes scores. 

The percentage you see is not an indication of how well the film is rated, but an indication of how many critics felt "positive" about the film. If you actually want some semblance of a general rating for a particular movie, just click on the percentage score itself and you'll see RT's attempt at producing an average critic score. In the case of "Glory," the average rating for the movie was 8 out of 10, but 95% of the 58 reviews collected by RT were positive.

There's also the issue of just what that word, "positive" means. If a review isn't clearly positive or negative, it's up to the RT curators to, as the website explains, "determine whether it is mixed-positive or mixed-negative." After all, "a decision has to be made: is it Fresh or is it Rotten?" If that sentence in and of itself isn't enough to make you skeptical of the site, just take a second to consider what it means. Essentially, a review that assesses a film as kind of ok but not without serious issues is given the same weighting as one which proclaims the film to be a once-in-a-generation masterpiece.

Some might say that Denzel is the best actor ever, and however you feel about it, there's no denying he's an acting legend. With that in mind, it's always odd to see these titans of Hollywood summed up in lists of cartoon tomatoes and splats. Not that there isn't space for something like Rotten Tomatoes in a world where the never-ending barrage of media has left us adrift in a nightmarescape populated by ever-expanding "recently added" lists, because it can help wade through the nonsense.

Anyone unclear on the effect this proliferation of streaming services and the impossible amounts of "content" on offer has on our mental state might take a quick look at Barry Schwartz's 2004 piece in Scientific American where he meticulously lays out, "As the number of choices we face increases, the psychological benefits we derive start to level off. And some of the negative effects of choice accelerate." Every day, we face what Schwartz called a "tyranny of choice." This creates an environment where something like Rotten Tomatoes can not only succeed but become infinitely more influential than it probably should. We want simplicity to guide us through the modern media murk.

This is all just a long way of saying that Rotten Tomatoes should not be seen as the final word on film and TV criticism. Contrary to what the site would have you believe, there are not just two perfect sci-fi movies or two perfect horror movies, and Denzel's best movie is whatever film you personally think is the best.