10. The Hurricane

There probably really isn’t much that can make a person feel better about serving almost 20 years of prison time for a triple homicide you didn’t commit, but on the list of things that might come sort of close, having your life turned into a movie starring Denzel Washington must rank near the top. Washington toplined 1999’s The Hurricane as Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, the real-life boxer whose long incarceration for three 1966 murders inspired public protests from a number of activists (including Bob Dylan, who wrote the 1975 song “Hurricane” about Rubin). Of course, this being Hollywood, a few liberties were taken with the details of Rubin’s life, which understandably angered some of the people depicted in the film (such as boxer Joey Giardello, who sued The Hurricane‘s producers for libel) as well as a noticeable number of critics (among them the New Yorker’s David Denby, who called it “False, evasive, and factually thin — a liberal fairytale”). No matter how they felt about the film, though, pretty much everyone agreed that Washington was terrific in it — a position exemplified by the Cincinnati Enquirer’s Margaret A. McGurk, who said, “As the center of the drama, Mr. Washington more than fills the screen; he very nearly sets it on fire.”

9. Courage Under Fire

Released in the years before American audiences developed an allergy to movies about wars in the Middle Eastern desert, Courage Under Fire used a Rashomon-style screenplay (written by Patrick Sheane Duncan) to keep viewers guessing about the final days of Army Captain Emma Walden (Meg Ryan), a Medal of Honor candidate whose death is being investigated by Nathaniel Serling (Washington), a lieutenant colonel with a painful history on the battlefield. To this point, Washington had played a lot of cool and/or affable characters, but Courage served as a reminder of the fact that he’s every bit as capable of showing depth; though the movie’s marketing hook had more to do with Ryan’s character than Washington’s, the story is about his redemption just as much as her death. The confidence with which he handled Serling’s troubled journey wasn’t lost on critics; though Washington already had a pair of Oscar nominations to his credit, Courage motivated Robin Clifford of Reeling Reviews to note, “Denzel Washington gives as fine a performance as I have seen him give.”

8. Unstoppable

A buddy-pic action thriller that takes two quippin’-‘n’-squabblin’ guys and puts them on board an out-of-control train hurtling toward disaster with a lethal chemical payload, Unstoppable could easily have been the sort of C-level, direct-to-video nonsense that once awaited unlucky Blockbuster patrons who waited to peruse the shelves until after dark on a Saturday night. Director Tony Scott did it up right, however, turning Mark Bomback’s screenplay into a taut, laudably lean 98-minute ride that boasts plenty of visual thrills and a pair of purely entertaining lead performances from Denzel Washington and Chris Pine. “Some movies win you Oscars, and some have you playing second banana to an evil train,” noted an appreciative Moira MacDonald for the Seattle Times. “And both have their place.”

7. Inside Man

Washington teamed up with Spike Lee for the fourth time in this heist flick, which pitted New York police detective Keith Frazier (Washington) against a bank robber (Clive Owen) who may not be everything he seems. A familiar premise? Absolutely, and there were more than a few people who raised an eyebrow at the knowledge that Spike Lee would direct what Newsweek’s David Ansen called an “unapologetic genre movie.” As far as genre movies go, however, Inside Man is pretty smart stuff — and with a top-shelf cast that surrounded Washington and Owen with Jodie Foster, Willem Dafoe, and Christopher Plummer, well… it isn’t hard to see why this represented Lee’s biggest commercial success. In the words of CHUD’s Devin Faraci, “Inside Man is the Spike Lee film for people who don’t go to see Spike Lee films, and it’s also a fun treat for people who see everything the man does.”

6. Crimson Tide

Washington’s long and fruitful partnership with director Tony Scott kicked off with this maritime thriller, which put Washington in a submarine with Gene Hackman, tossed in a subplot about messy post-Cold War Russian politics — as well as some uncredited script doctoring by Quentin Tarantino — and grossed a healthy $154 million worldwide. For Washington, Tide was the third film in a box office-busting trilogy that started with The Pelican Brief and Philadelphia; put together, they combined for a whopping $558 million and cemented his status as one of the most bankable actors in the industry. Of course, that bankability sustained a bit of a dent with his next release, the painful flop Virtuosity, but the less said about that, the better; let us conclude, instead, with the words of the Madison Capital Times’ Rob Thomas, who wrote of Tide, “It’s great to see a high-tech thriller that thrills because of its actors, not its special effects.”

5. Devil in a Blue Dress

After putting together a mostly unbroken string of high quality, financially successful projects between 1987 and 1995, Denzel Washington was overdue for what economists like to call a “correction” — and he experienced one after Crimson Tide, entering a lull that found him starring in misguided efforts such as Virtuosity, The Preacher’s Wife, Fallen, and The Siege. It wasn’t all bad, though; despite its failure to find a typically Denzel-sized audience, 1995’s Devil in a Blue Dress offered filmgoers a cool little morsel of neo-noir during a time when new entries in the genre were few and far between. Adapted from Walter Mosley’s novel, Devil starred Washington as factory worker-turned-private eye “Easy” Rawlins, whose initial foray into sleuthing for hire is filled with all the hangovers, dames, and threatening goons one could hope for. Despite a sequel-ready ending (and ten more books in Mosley’s Rawlins series), Devil has yet to spawn further installments — a shame for critics like Jeffrey M. Anderson of Combustible Celluloid, who observed, “In the aftermath of the Oscars, it now seems clear that Devil in a Blue Dress was one of the best films of 1995.”

4. The Mighty Quinn

More than a few television actors have difficulty making the transition from the boob tube to the big screen, but Denzel Washington picked up his first Oscar nomination (for his supporting turn as slain South African activist Steven Biko, in 1987’s Cry Freedom) before finishing his six-year run on St. Elsewhere — and then he went on to earn even louder critical applause for 1989’s The Mighty Quinn. Based on A.H.Z. Carr’s novel Finding Maubee, the film gave Washington an opportunity to display his seemingly bottomless reserves of cool — and, in the first of what would be many police roles, his gift for brandishing a service revolver. While not a major box office success, Quinn‘s twisty mystery plot, sunny island locale, and a solid cast that included Robert Townsend, Mimi Rogers, and M. Emmet Walsh impressed critics — particularly Roger Ebert, who deemed it one of the year’s best films and wrote, “The Mighty Quinn is a spy thriller, a buddy movie, a musical, a comedy and a picture that is wise about human nature. And yet with all of those qualities, it never seems to strain.”

3. Much Ado About Nothing

Following his Academy Award-nominated performance in 1992’s Malcolm X, Washington opted for a decidedly less serious role — that of the matchmaking prince Don Pedro of Aragon in Much Ado About Nothing. Kenneth Branagh’s second Shakespeare adaptation, Much Ado united a colorful cast (including Washington, Keanu Reeves, Emma Thompson, Kate Beckinsale, Michael Keaton, and Branagh himself) to tell the tale of warring half-brothers (Washington and Reeves) whose squabbling serves as the backdrop for all manner of machinations and misunderstandings surrounding the wedding of Claudio (Robert Sean Leonard) and Hero (Beckinsale). As with most Shakespeare adaptations, Much Ado didn’t make many waves outside the traditional arthouse crowd, but for the folks who saw it, it proved a deft, smartly rearranged version of one of the Bard’s lighter plays. Though some scribes took issue with the film’s eclectic cast, for most critics, its flaws were minor; in the words of the Washington Post’s Desson Thomson, “Director Branagh, who altered the play imaginatively for the screen, gives wonderful import to this silliness from long ago.”

2. Malcolm X

A lightning rod in life and death, Malcolm X was a natural fit for the biopic treatment — but it isn’t hard to understand why producer Marvin Worth had to labor through 25 years of turnarounds, screenplay revisions, changing leading men (including Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy), and multiple directors before Malcolm X finally made its way to theaters in November of 1992. And even with Washington signed on to play the slain activist, and Spike Lee in the director’s chair, Malcolm didn’t see release without multiple controversies, a creative tug of war between Lee and Warner Bros., and a last-minute influx of cash from a group of donors that included Bill Cosby, Oprah Winfrey, and Michael Jordan. Somewhat predictably, given Malcolm X’s thorny reputation — not to mention the movie’s three-and-a-half-hour length — this wasn’t a biopic for everyone, but most of those who did see it (including 91 percent of Tomatometer critics) agreed that, for all its struggle in getting to the screen, Malcolm X was a tribute worthy of its subject. It is, wrote Vincent Canby of the New York Times, “An ambitious, tough, seriously considered biographical film that, with honor, eludes easy characterization.”

1. Glory

The first of three films to unite Denzel Washington with director Edward Zwick, Glory arrived in theaters five days before 1989’s other big war drama, Born on the 4th of July — and although July‘s grosses quickly dwarfed Glory‘s, critics were quick to point out that Glory, which dramatized the struggles faced by the Union Army’s first all-black Civil War regiment, was every bit as compelling. Washington starred here as an escaped slave-turned-soldier known as Trip — and although the cast was heavy with talent, including Morgan Freeman, Andre Braugher, and Matthew Broderick, it was Washington who walked away with the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. In an Entertainment Weekly retrospective of his career, Washington looked back on Glory, revealing that before he filmed a crucial scene in which his character is flogged, he walked around “calling on the spirits of all the slaves” — and that “that whip actually hurt.” That quote is enough to explain the level of commitment to craft that has helped make Denzel Washington one of Hollywood’s most respected actors, and Glory‘s 122 minutes are enough to tell you why it inspired ReelViews’ James Berardinelli to call it “without question, one of the best movies ever made about the American Civil War.”

Unstoppable

Director Tony Scott has taken some knocks in recent years, but give the man credit: he knows how to stage a white-knuckle action scene. And in Unstoppable, the tale of an out-of-control locomotive, critics say he’s reeled off a whole string of them, making for one of the most purely enjoyable action flicks of the year. Denzel Washington and Chis Pine star as a pair of railway employees who must regain control of a train that contains an absurd amount of toxic chemicals before it decimates an entire town. It’s a tantalizingly simple premise that the pundits say yields some terrific set pieces; they also say the Certified Fresh Unstoppable is taut, briskly paced, and impeccably crafted. (Check out this week’s Total Recall, in which we list some memorable train movies.)

Morning Glory

Rachel McAdams is a movie star. She’s brought charm and spunk to a lot of roles before, but critics say Morning Glory offers definitive proof she’s the real deal. Unfortunately, they also note the rest of the movie doesn’t rise to the quality of its leading lady; it’s a relatively toothless satire of television that offers a few big laughs but ultimately feels like something of a missed opportunity. McAdams stars as a young go-getter on a failing network morning show who hopes to improve ratings by adding a legendary news anchor (Harrison Ford) to the cast; unfortunately, her new charge is grumpy about working on such a news-lite program. Can our heroine make the show a ratings winner – and find love in the process? The pundits say Morning Glory is mostly affable, with a few moments of inspiration, but that despite strong work from McAdams, it’s not quite as substantial as it could have been (Find out what star Jeff Goldblum’s Five Favorite Films are here.)

Skyline

It appears the folks behind Skyline were afraid that movie critics would act like a bunch of Chicken Littles, since the film wasn’t screened in the U.S. prior to release. Skyline tells the tale of a group of friends who discover that aliens are abducting every human being; our ragtag heroes realize they are the only hope to save humanity. Kids, put down those back issues of Omni and guess that Tomatometer!

The Great Train Robbery

Though it’s probably the shortest film ever to get the Total Recall treatment, the 12-minute The Great Train Robbery may also be the most influential: not only did it establish a new benchmark for narrative filmmaking, but it also utilized a number of new techniques, including cross-cutting, double exposure, and shooting on location. Accomplishing in just a few minutes what many films fail to do in two hours, Robbery established our lengthy cinematic love affair with the railroad; it was, as Dennis Schwartz of Ozus’ World Movie Reviews wrote, “The most widely viewed picture of its time.”

The General

1927’s The General found Buster Keaton taking his peerless physical comedy to a more ambitious level, dramatizing a legendary Civil War raid with some of the most dangerous, complicated, and expensive stunts of the silent film era. An unmitigated critical and commercial disaster at the time of its release, The General was one of Keaton’s biggest disappointments, but it was really just a movie ahead of its time; in the years since, it’s made numerous top critics’ Best Movies lists, made the top 20 in the AFI’s “100 Years…100 Laughs,” and been enshrined in the National Film Registry. It is, in the words of the Chicago Reader’s Dave Kehr, “An almost perfect entertainment.”

Strangers on a Train

Trains were a recurring theme in Alfred Hitchcock’s work, popping up as plot devices (The 39 Steps and North by Northwest) or even almost characters unto themselves (The Lady Vanishes). For the purposes of this list, however, we’re climbing aboard 1951’s Strangers on a Train, Hitch’s troubled adaptation of the Patricia Highsmith novel. From the script’s tortured birth to the director’s battles with Warner Bros. over casting, nothing seemed to come easily during Strangers‘ production, and early reviews were lukewarm — but almost 50 years later, it’s regarded as one of the master’s finest works, both as a smart adaptation of the book and as a rich, subtext-heavy thriller. “Two men, a problem, and a crime is an old theme,” wrote Mark Athitakis for Filmcritic.com, “but the list of works that exploit it perfectly is a short one. Strangers on a Train belongs on it.”

Murder on the Orient Express

Sidney Lumet lined up an all-star cast for this adaptation of the 1934 Agatha Christie novel, and although Christie famously felt Albert Finney lacked a splendid enough mustache to play Hercule Poirot, 1974’s Murder on the Orient Express still steamed its way to six Academy Award nominations (including a Best Supporting Actress win for Ingrid Bergman) and heaps of critical acclaim. Packed with old-fashioned intrigue and bolstered by the talents of Lauren Bacall, Sean Connery, John Gielgud, and Vanessa Redgrave — not to mention Finney and Bergman — Express earned the admiration of the New York Times’ Vincent Canby, who appreciated the way it “recalls that innocent, pre-Amtrak time when the Orient was still mysterious and railroad travel was full of exotic possibilities.”

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three

The 2009 remake offers serviceable, slick action thrills, but for the grittiest, sweatiest train movie of them all, you’ve got to go back to the original Taking of Pelham One Two Three. Released in 1974, it’s the story of a grizzled New York Transit Authority cop (Walter Matthau) forced to defuse a hostage crisis when a gang of criminals (led by Robert Shaw) commandeers a subway train and gives the authorities one hour to deliver a $1 million ransom. (Hey, it was a long time ago.) Taut, smartly written, and adroitly balanced between sharp dialogue and nifty set pieces, Pelham has come to be regarded as a somewhat overlooked classic of the era; it is, as William Thomas wrote for Empire Magazine, “The kind of gritty, relentless thriller that could only come from the ’70s.”

Silver Streak

The first of four collaborations between Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder, 1976’s Silver Streak stars Wilder as George Caldwell, a shy book editor whose plans for a boring L.A.-Chicago train ride go awry when he finds himself embroiled in a complicated (and rather deadly) plot to cover up the truth about a pair of forged Rembrandts. Just when poor George thinks he’s lucked into some railway nookie with a fellow passenger (Jill Clayburgh), he ends up the unwitting target of a gangster (Ray Walston) who has him tossed off the train — twice! — and he needs the help of an impeccably mustachioed crook (Pryor) to save the day (and the lady). It’s very silly, and just as uneven, but Silver Streak has more than enough inspired moments to make up for the bumpy spots; as David Nusair observed for Reel Film Reviews, “the entire film might just be worth a look for the sequence in which Pryor teaches Wilder how to be black.”

Runaway Train

What do you get when you take a train in the Alaskan wilderness, put an insane Jon Voight on it, give him Eric Roberts for a sidekick, and throw in a little Danny Trejo for good measure? The answer lies in this ‘80s action classic about a violent lunatic (Voight) who escapes from prison with the help of a dimwitted convict (Roberts) and ends up stowing away on a train that just happens to be on a collision course…with DEATH! Ahem. The cast and the premise suggest cheesy B-movie thrills, but Runaway Train boasts a surprisingly impressive pedigree — the script was based on a Kurosawa screenplay, and director Andrei Konchalovsky was still years away from succumbing to the nonsense of Tango & Cash. As Geoff Andrew wrote for Time Out, “Somehow one leaves aside the blatant implausibilities, the coincidences, even Eric Roberts, and takes great pleasure in a breakneck ride to the end of the line.”

Throw Momma from the Train

In 1987, Strangers on a Train received a darkly comedic update in the form of Throw Momma from the Train, a Danny DeVito directorial effort about a struggling writer (Billy Crystal) whose plagiarist ex-wife (Kate Mulgrew) is living large on the success of a book she stole from him, and the browbeaten middle-aged college student (DeVito) who cooks up a plan to get rid of her — as well as his own battle axe of a mother (Anne Ramsey). While far from a universal success with critics (the Washington Post’s Rita Kempley suggested filmgoers “throw the whole thing in front of a subway and hope it gets dragged for a couple of miles”), Throw Momma‘s blend of mordant humor and well-cast comic foils earned admiration from writers like Ken Hanke of the Asheville Mountain Xpress, who called it “A rather sweet little comedy masquerading as a black comedy.”

Under Siege 2: Dark Territory

It’s irredeemably silly — and it’s considered a disappointment even in the often painful context of the Steven Seagal filmography — but we’d be remiss if we didn’t tip our conductor’s cap to Under Siege 2: Dark Territory, the train-bound sequel to Seagal’s 1992 hit about Casey Ryback, a NAVY Seal-turned-chef with a John McClane-like propensity for crossing paths with maniacal villains. Having saved the world from a boat in Under Siege, Ryback hit the rails here, riding with his niece (Katherine Heigl) on a journey to visit the grave of her father; before they can get there, though, their train is hijacked by Travis Dane (a scenery-gobbling Eric Bogosian), who intends to earn a billion-dollar payday by using a space laser to blow up the East Coast. It’s no wonder there was never an Under Siege 3 — not yet, anyway — but this is the only movie on this (or any) list whose climax features the bad guy having his fingers cut off by a helicopter door. As the Arizona Daily Star’s Phil Villarreal shrugged in his begrudgingly positive review, “Run-of-the-mill Seagal. Could be better, could be worse.”

The Polar Express

Yeah, yeah, we know — Robert Zemeckis probably needs to step away from the mo-cap machine and give us a movie that doesn’t star dead-eyed animatrons. But in this cynical age, isn’t it worth something to have a film that believes so clearly in wonder — and goes to such great lengths to share that wonder with its audience? It may not be worth a great deal of critical goodwill, as evidenced by The Polar Express‘ underwhelming 56 percent on the Tomatometer, but between its $300 million theatrical gross, the Polar Express amusement park ride, and the general lack of modern Christmas movies for kids that aren’t thoroughly crass, it’s easy to understand why so many people agree with Tony Toscano of Talking Pictures, who praised it as “A warm fuzzy for the holidays.”

The Darjeeling Limited

People in the movies just don’t travel by train as much as they used to — unless, that is, they’re the sort of lovable eccentrics that populate Wes Anderson movies. For example: 2007’s The Darjeeling Limited, named for the train booked by Francis Whitman (Owen Wilson) to take himself and his brothers Jack (Jason Schwartzman) and Peter (Adrien Brody) on a trip across India. They haven’t seen each other since the death of their father a year previous, and their squabbling quickly makes it apparent why; in fact, it gets them kicked off the train, adding another surreal component to a journey that already had plenty of them. “Brothers and other strangers ride The Darjeeling Limited,” exhorted Carrie Rickey of the Philadelphia Inquirer, calling it “Wes Anderson’s captivating road movie that views life as a Great Train of Being.”

Transsiberian

An ensemble cast, a slowly unraveling mystery, and a railway journey where little is as it seems — Brad Anderson’s Transsiberian was released in 2008, but it’s stocked with timeless cinematic ingredients. And it makes smart use of them, too; the smartly twisted script, co-written by Anderson and Will Conroy, recalls themes that will be instantly familiar to anyone who’s seen a Hitchcock film (such as Strangers on a Train, perhaps?), but it isn’t slavishly derivative — and it’s solidly cast, with Woody Harrelson, Kate Mara, Emily Mortimer, Ben Kingsley, and Eduardo Noriega turning in superlative work. As Roger Ebert appreciatively noted, “Transsiberian starts in neutral, taking the time to introduce its characters, and then goes from second into high like greased lightning. I was a little surprised to notice how thoroughly it wound me up. This is a good one.”