I’m going to check out Unstoppable this weekend because it looks like dumb fun and I actually find Tony Scott to be a much more entertaining filmmaker than his brother, but sadly, seeing the latest Denzel Washington film isn’t exactly a draw for me any longer.

I used to believe Washington was like a modern day Gary Cooper: handsome, charismatic and able to excel in a variety of genres. Watch him in Devil in a Blue Dress and see how effortlessly cool he was, how smooth the performance is; better yet, watch him in He Got Game, playing a difficult character who has a desire for redemption and freedom. Actors play characters like that all the time, but many of them are unwilling to mine the depths that Washington did, to go to the dark places he went to in that film.

But lately, Washington has settled into a bit of an “easy” rhythm and seems uncomfortable playing outside a certain type. He plays both villains and heroes, but he plays them in the same way; there is no longer any shading to his portrayals, no subtlety. Washington has been reduced to an actor who merely yells instead of acting or genuinely emoting, and while it’s true that he often speaks louder rather than expressing his characters’ emotions in a more nuanced way, I think the problem runs deeper than that.

My bigger issue with Washington is that for the last several years, he seems to be rehashing characters he’s played before. With Unstoppable, he’s once again playing the grizzled old veteran who’s “too old for this shit” and trying to help fix a problem related to a train (see: last year’s Taking of Pelham 1 2 3).

His character in Inside Man was another law enforcement character in the mold of what I’ve seen him do in everything from Ricochet to The Siege to Out of Time (or Virtuosity or The Bone Collector or Déjà Vu or Fallen … wow, this guy has played a lot of cops and FBI Agents!

On the other hand, in The Great Debaters Washington played a mentor and motivator who reminded me a lot of what he brought to the table in Antwone Fisher and even Remember the Titans. I’d like to see Washington take on more of those kind of roles.

The thing about Washington that compels me is that he’s still fascinating to watch; even when he’s playing retreads of roles he’s already done, he’s still got this innate charisma. It might be what frustrates me the most about Washington’s career choices: the dude is a natural born movie star, and I wish he would follow George Clooney’s model a bit more and try to make movies that have ideas rather than explosions, with characters who have complexities rather than long monologues. And when Clooney does a big blockbuster film, it’s usually something a bit more clever than the average Hollywood movie.

I was maybe seven or eight years old and I was home from school, sick, when I first saw Denzel Washington in a movie. I flipped through the two or three movie channels we had (and that was the premium package!), as I often did and Glory was on. I saw that Matthew Broderick and Cary Elwes were in it and at that time in my life, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and The Princess Bride were probably my favorite movies, so I decided to watch what I thought would be a boring movie about the Civil War.

I happened to like the movie a lot – still do – but what really amazed me was this guy Denzel Washington, who stole the movie. Clearly a lot of folks agreed with me and he won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for the performance. But watching that movie now, what astounds me the most about Washington is how full of vitality he was, how passionate he seemed, compared to how he is in most of his more recent roles. It’s like watching game film of Michael Jordan in his 1990 and comparing it to his stint with the Washington Wizards in the early 2000s.

It makes me wonder if some movie stars just lose a step as they get older, if sometimes they feel jaded by the process and don’t feel like they need to work as hard to get inside their characters. It seems actors like Johnny Depp, Robert Downey Jr. and Denzel Washington, who were so exciting as young actors, have now settled into a certain style and rhythm that they feel comfortable with. To keep going with the basketball analogy, it’s like they know all the veteran tricks and try to get by with their savvy rather than their raw skills. But is it because these skills fade or is it because they just don’t try as hard?

Clooney seems to be getting better and better, ditto for Matt Damon, Penelope Cruz, and a whole host of others. So what is it that leads some actors to age like a fine wine and others to turn to vinegar? I suppose it’s impossible to really know.

What I’d really like Denzel Washington to do is to work with Spike Lee again. Inside Man was perhaps not their finest collaboration, but I think Washington gives two of his best performances in Lee films: He Got Game and Malcolm X. I also thought he was excellent in Philadelphia (he’s actually much better than Tom Hanks, who won the Oscar opposite Washington), The Hurricane and Mississippi Masala.

The connecting thread with all of the great Denzel Washington performances seems to be that he’s good when he’s working with directors who coax great performances of their actors. Jonathan Demme, Norman Jewison, Mira Nair, Spike Lee — all of them are wonderful actors’ directors. Lately, Washington has been working with the Scott brothers, himself, and the Hughes Brothers. All of them fine filmmakers – Washington makes solid old-school feel-good films – but none of them would I consider “actors’ directors.”

I wasn’t the biggest fan of his Training Day performance. I thought he went too far over-the-top, especially in the last reel, and that it was a classic example of Washington yelling rather than acting. However, I enjoyed that he was willing to take a risk and I like the chemistry he had with Ethan Hawke, one of the most underrated actors out there (one day I’ll write my love letter column about him). And I think Washington certainly does well when he’s matched up with strong co-stars.

Unfortunately, the last few strong co-stars he’s had haven’t spent a lot of screen-time with him (think Travolta in Pelham or Russell Crowe in American Gangster or Clive Owen in Inside Man). In fact, the last performance of Washington’s I really enjoyed was in Man on Fire and I think it’s because he was fantastic and warm in the scenes with Dakota Fanning. And it was a role that required him to be quiet rather than loud.

I happen to like Chris Pine a lot and I find him to be charming, so I have hopes that their chemistry will help Unstoppable be more than just another shrug-inducing film in Washington’s filmography. But, really, my hope is that Washington finds a project that he’s truly passionate about again, that makes him want to be as hungry as he was during those early years when every performance was a knockout. Denzel Washington seems to be unstoppable … I just want him to bring his considerable talent to the right projects.