Credit: Alamy

Most people remember Denzel Washington as the commanding, serious leading man, which is understandable, but it leaves out how strange his filmography could get when he fancied it.

The American Gangster star wasn’t always chasing fame, and that’s what makes his career far more interesting than his contemporaries. Take Fallen, where he’s dealing with demonic possession in a supernatural crime thriller. Then you’ve got Training Day, where he plays Alonzo Harris, a corrupt cop who is so charming that you almost forget just how awful he is.

What’s interesting is how comfortable Washington seems moving away from the sort of stereotypical roles people usually associate with him. He can take on something odd or slightly offbeat and still make it feel like a Denzel Washington film, which is quite a trick when you think about it.

That’s what makes this particular Netflix run such a good one to revisit. It catches the actor at a point where he was taking big swings and quite often getting away with them.

Five best Denzel Washington classics to stream on Netflix:

Fallen (Gregory Hoblit, 1998)

Fallen is a rather curious entry in Washington’s filmography, because supernatural horror is not the first thing one associates with him, and yet the man has done a remarkable job.

He plays Philadelphia detective John Hobbes, who watches serial killer Edgar Reese meet his end, only for a string of horribly familiar murders to begin almost at once. Naturally, things become peculiar, and Hobbes soon suspects he is dealing with something far messier than your average copycat.

The film works well because of Washington’s captivating authority. He never starts flapping about simply because the plot has gone completely off the rails; he treats the whole business like a proper investigation, which gives the horror far more bite. John Goodman and Donald Sutherland are excellent company, too, and while it wasn’t a great success initially, it gradually earned a much-deserved cult following.

The Hurricane (Norman Jewison, 1999)

Denzel Washington really does throw himself into The Hurricane, and we mean he actually throws himself into it. He plays Rubin ‘Hurricane’ Carter, the middleweight boxer who spent years in prison after being convicted of murder before eventually being freed.

But the boxing isn’t the MVP here; it’s watching this man realise, bit by bit, that his entire life is being taken from him, and Washington gives everything in embodying the character. He worked closely with Carter beforehand, and you can absolutely tell.

He earned an Oscar nomination for ‘Best Actor’ but didn’t win, and apparently, that one stung rather badly. Years later, Washington admitted it left him bitter about awards season for quite some time, which makes watching it now even more fascinating. You almost realise that he knew he’d done something rather extraordinary here.

Training Day (Antoine Fuqua, 2001)

Training Day is where Washington really starts letting the menace come out in the day. He plays Alonzo Harris, an LAPD narcotics officer taking rookie Jake Hoyt (played by Ethan Hawke), around for one very long day on the job.

And Alonzo’s version of training, as you soon discover, is basically corruption dressed up as experience, making you wonder how normal the wrongdoing all seems. He jokes with people and charms them, but he also threatens them and pushes them around and then just carries on as though nothing particularly unusual has happened.

The famous “King Kong” boast near the end was improvised by Washington, which really tells you how completely he understood Alonzo by that point. He won the ‘Best Actor’ Oscar for the performance, and watching it now, you see a rather prime Washington, owning the scenery.

Man on Fire (Tony Scott, 2004)

Man on Fire came at a point when Washington’s name alone could make a thriller, and Tony Scott knew exactly how to use that. The film sees him as John Creasy, a former CIA operative who has more or less checked out of life before taking a job protecting Pita, a young girl played by Dakota Fanning.

Their relationship is what gives the film its weight. Creasy gradually softens around her, so when she is kidnapped, the change in him lands harder. Washington doesn’t suddenly turn the character into a shouting action hero either, keeping Creasy measured, even when the revenge plot gets vicious.

For the role, the actor studied footage of contract killer Richard Kuklinski after Scott showed it to him during preparation. He was interested in how real killers look in real life, and it did wonders for Creasy, resulting in one of Washington’s colder performances, yet full of life.

Inside Man (Spike Lee, 2006)

By Inside Man, Washington and Spike Lee already seem completely comfortable with each other, and you can practically feel that in the way the film moves. Washington plays Detective Keith Frazier, an NYPD negotiator called in when Dalton Russell (played by Clive Owen) takes over a Manhattan bank with a very clever plan.

Frazier spends far more time talking than waving a gun around, which suits Washington perfectly. He gets to be funny and slightly smug, but it’s fun to watch how fast he switches once he realises the robbery is not quite adding up.

Lee apparently gave Washington the choice between Frazier and Russell, and he passed on the latter because the man spends so much of the film behind a mask. Fair enough. He later compared Frazier to something like Brutus going to Brooklyn, drawing partly on his stage work in Julius Caesar.