Denzel Washington's Gritty '90s Sports Movie Is A Must-Watch On Paramount+

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If you're yet to check out the entire Denzel Washington filmography, you're sort of spoiled for choice. This is, after all, one of the most engaging, effortlessly charismatic stars of the last few decades, and his filmography is a testament to that fact. That makes "The Hurricane" as good a place to start as any, as the 1999 prison drama (which masqueraded as a sports biopic) features one of Denzel's best performances and is available to stream right now on Paramount+.

By the end of the '90s, Washington had already won an Oscar, proved himself a reliably bankable star, and was revered by audiences and critics. The one thing he hadn't done was play a bad guy. That would change in 2001 when Denzel prompted controversy for being cast as corrupt detective Alonso Harris in "Training Day." But before he proved the naysayers wrong by earning his second Oscar for "Training Day," Washington reminded everyone why he had been so successful at playing the good guy for so long.

In 1999, the actor portrayed real-life boxer Rubin "Hurricane" Carter in "The Hurricane." The film told the true story of how Carter was wrongly convicted of murder in 1966 and spent 20 years in prison before being freed in 1985. It's not only one of Denzel Washington's best movies but one of the best, most overlooked films of the '90s — and it's made all the more engaging by Roger Deakins' immersive cinematography.

Directed by Norman Jewison, "The Hurricane" was based on both Carter's 1974 autobiography "The Sixteenth Round: From Number 1 Contender To 45472" and Sam Chaiton and Terry Swinton's 1991 book "Lazarus and the Hurricane: The Freeing of Rubin 'The Hurricane' Carter." Though the film is ostensibly a sports biopic, it largely takes place in a prison and follows the titular former middleweight boxer as he's accused of shooting a bartender and two customers dead, landing him a triple life sentence.

The rest of the film explores how Carter endured a prison bid that would break the average man. All the while, "The Hurricane" remains intent upon proving his innocence and eventually finds help in that regard from Brooklynite Lesra Martin (Vicellous Reon Shannon). Along with his Canadian foster family, Martin starts a campaign to overturn Carter's conviction and finally free the boxer.

Notably, "The Hurricane" was the only time Denzel felt scared while shooting a movie. That's because it was shot on-location inside East Jersey State Prison (formerly "Rahway State Prison"), the same maximum security facility in which Carter did his own bid 15 years before "The Hurricane" started production. Being locked inside the prison unnerved Denzel somewhat, but it doesn't show in the film, as the actor rendered Carter's own remarkable resilience in a way that made it feel as if Denzel himself could withstand anything. Part of that had to do with the fact the star was constantly reminded of the man he was portraying. Speaking with the Tampa Bay Times in 2000, Washington revealed that the East Jersey State prison guards spoke about Carter with a kind of reverence that struck the actor. "They said everybody gets broken in this penitentiary," he recalled. "But not him."

"The Hurricane" was a decent enough commercial success upon its December 1999 release. It grossed $74 million against a budget of $50 million, though if you know how the box office actually works you'll know it likely didn't make too much in terms of profit. Still, the critics were mostly impressed. "The Hurricane" maintains a 82% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes to this day, with most reviewers praising the film as a rousing retelling of Rubin Carter's story.

In his three-and-a-half star review, Roger Ebert called the movie "strong stuff," noting how he was "feeling some impatience in the earlier reaches" but became "deeply absorbed in its second and third acts, until at the end I was blinking at tears." Not every critic was a fan, however, with several feeling as if the movie veered into maudlin territory a little too often. Otherwise, "The Hurricane" was heralded as the kind of film that, in today's streaming-saturated world, we'd surely greet with unanimous praise. As Bob Longino of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution put it, "The Hurricane" was "fashioned with the kind of classic Hollywood professionalism that's fast becoming a rarity at the movies." If that kind of thing was becoming a rarity in 1999, it's all but extinct now.

That's one reason why you should check out the film. The other is Denzel Washington himself. If there's one thing all the critics had in common, it was reverence for Washington's lead performance, which was dubbed "mesmerizing," "absorbing," and "toweringly triumphant" by various critics. With the film streaming at no extra cost for subscribers on Paramount+, there's never been a better time to revisit this excellent drama, which also happens to be one of the best legal thrillers in cinema history.