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My favorite Denzel Washington movie isn’t Training Day, even though I can probably recite all 122 pages of that script off top. And it’s not any of the other usual suspects, like one of his numerous links with Spike Lee or the late, great Tony Scott. The most entertaining Denzel Washington movie, to me—the one I can run back ad infinitum, that holds a special place in my heart despite not being his objective, critical-consensus “best”? That would be Out of Time, a breezy neo-noir from 2003 that is oft-overlooked but by no means insignificant.
Right now across the nation and beyond, theatergoers are being treated to another in a long line of 50-point Denzel games, as he, respectfully, validates the “wash” in Washington amidst a very talented ensemble in Ridley Scott’s Gladiator II and reaffirms that when it comes to the Best Actor Alive convo, it’s just Big Him. It got me thinking back to Out of Time, which I’ve only just realized was probably my first Denzel big-screen experience—13 years old at the Clearview Cinemas in Cedar Grove, New Jersey. Few others probably remember it as clearly, and who can blame them—it’s a B-movie thriller that came not long after his Academy Award Best Actor win for Training Day and just before Man on Fire. But on the lowest of keys, it hits just as hard as those and all of his other top-10 mainstays.
This isn’t an endorsement fueled solely on nostalgia—subtracting channel-surf landings on TNT and HBO mainstays like Training Day or The Bone Collector, Out of Time is probably the Denzel Washington film I’ve revisited with intention the most. There are big Denzel performances in big movies, and outsized Denzel showings in smaller films. Out of Time is neither. Directed by Carl Franklin—who had previously directed Denzel in Devil In a Blue Dress, another Obvious Denzel Classic—it’s the kind of mid-budget, sexy B-movie thriller that died out of multiplexes in the 2010s. Today it would be an Apple TV+ series that grinds the plot to dust with two episodes still left to go; as is, the film barely cracks 100 minutes and the result is a taut thriller that basically just keeps shuttling Denzel from frying pan to fire and back again, with stakes just high enough to keep you invested but never too serious to wring the fun out of it all. You’ll probably never see a scene from this in an honorific awards-show reel, but it’s the only Denzel Washington movie where he leverages his movie-star charisma to keep the audience on pins and needles over an incoming fax, so maybe you should?
Good or evil, the many charming badasses in Denzel’s pantheon usually have their shit together—or at least they’ve perfected the art of appearing to have their shit together. Out of Time is delicious for being the rare role that makes him smaller. He plays police Chief Matt Whitlock, a cargo pants-and-Monarchs-wearing big fish in a South Florida pond so small that size barely matters. He’s cool, sure, but cool is a base setting all Denzel characters inherently start at, because Denzel. And that patented ease and assuredness only lasts about 30 minutes before Matt gets plunged into a noir conspiracy of airport-paperback proportions, and then the fun really begins: we get to see Denzel squirm.
