Denzel Washington Follows Up 2 Guns Smash With … PBS?

Denzel Washington is having the best week ever, rejuvenating a simmering summer box office week as the summer enters its dog days with the electric release of shoot ’em up cop buddy movie 2 Guns.

Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg are both fairly teflon actors, but the film shot to the top of the box office this week, leaving the Smurfs $100 million redux in the dust at number three.

The rally led the media to go nuts over Washington, dubbed Hollywood’s “Most Bankable Star” by BuzzFeed in a recent profile in which he is hailed as the sole holdout that managed to straddle the new and old ways:

“This kind of career was the stock-in-trade for male movie stars like Robert Mitchum, Jimmy Stewart, and Gene Hackman. But as American mainstream movies have become less and less about great acting and more and more about great action, the great actors of today — most of them Washington’s peers, many of them fellow Oscar winners — have floundered where Washington has succeeded. Actors like Robert DeNiro and Russell Crowe just are not credible as solo action stars, while action stars like John Travolta and Nicolas Cage lost their credibility as quality actors years ago. (Yes, it’s true, there was a time when Travolta and Cage were considered among the best actors of their generation, despite their best efforts to get us to forget it ever happened.)”

The New York Times similarly observed that Denzel Washington consistently performs and that “[while] many stars are struggling to retain their wattage, Mr. Washington reliably turns out an audience.”

So what next for the guy that managed to dodge the late-summer movie hell bullet and retain victory lap status?

Denzel Washington just wrapped a new project, “The March,” which airs August 27th. The PBS film airs one day after the 50th anniversaryMartin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech.

Do you consistently enjoy Denzel Washington’s work as his career progresses?