He loves crowd-pleasing thrillers where he's a detective or cop or man on the run-- the sorts of star vehicles that they rarely make anymore, movies that feel designed to run on mid-budgets aiming for mid-profits that largely exist to help young stars cut their teeth and build star power with an audience. Even the less successful Denzel movies like this-- your Ricochets, your Virtuositys, your Sieges-- you can see Denzel figuring out how to carry movies exactly like those.

So by the time he's been opening mainstream movies successfully for a few years, you can tell that, in your John Qs, your Out of Times, etc, he's figured out how to just *radiate* star power. Most young actors-- especially ones who got their start in TV like Denzel-- can never truly make that jump to Movie Icon because they just don't make these sorts of movies anymore. So studios will throw your Taylor Kitschs or Jai Courteneys or God knows who else into these giant roles in big expensive movies and expect them to just have IT from the jump... when you don't really become a movie star until you've made a *bunch* of lower-budget and indie movies and learned how to carry them on your own.

So maybe Denzel keeps making these B-grade thrillers and actioners-- Safe House, 2 Guns, the Equalizer trilogy, etc-- because he's the only one that can really get them made at this level anymore, lol. I don't know. But he's definitely the sort of star that is very reluctant to star in anything that isn't a Denzel Vehicle. (It'll be very interesting to see him in Gladiator 2, his first supporting role in a non-self-directed movie since... what, Crimson Tide??)

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