‘Heart Condition’: the single worst movie of Denzel Washington’s career
There’s enough compelling evidence to suggest the ‘Oscars curse’ is a very real thing, and not even a talent of Denzel Washington‘s calibre was able to escape from the recurring habit of an actor following up an Academy Award-winning performance with some of the worst work of their career.
Exactly seven weeks after the release of Edward Zwick’s epic war drama Glory in December 1989 – which would land Washington his first Oscar in the ‘Best Supporting Actor’ category – he was back on-screen alongside Bob Hoskins in writer and director James D. Parriott’s buddy cop comedy Heart Condition.
The prospect of Washington’s smooth-talking and charismatic persona being forced to contend with Hoskins’ grizzled demeanour sounds appealing on paper, but the concept is a real head-scratcher. It’s remarkable that it even managed to get made at the time, and it would be an understatement and then some to suggest that it does not play well when viewed through a modern lens.
Hoskins plays the openly racist and bigoted cop Jack Mooney, while Washington is the dynamic lawyer Napoleon Stone, with the two holding an active disdain for each other, which reaches new heights when the latter starts dating the former’s ex-girlfriend. So far, so standard, but the twist opens the door to a storytelling miscalculation of staggering proportions that endures to this day as the single worst feature of Washington’s entire career.
At around the same time, Mooney’s hard-living lifestyle catches up to him and causes him to suffer a heart attack and lose consciousness; Stone is killed in a car accident. When the police officer wakes up, not only does he find out he’s received a heart transplant from his arch-enemy, but his ghost has started following him around to encourage Mooney to solve his murder.
At various points throughout Heart Condition, there are racial slurs being tossed around with casual abandon, Washington describing his manhood as having similar qualities to that of a horse, a set piece played for laughs that incorporates a hulking black dildo, Mooney being shocked to discover that African-Americans enjoy bowling – which causes Washington to retort “yeah, and we swim, too” – women are assaulted, animals are abused, and hate crimes are committed.
Unsubstantiated rumours claimed that Heart Condition was so abysmal that it swore Washington off the prospect of making another comedy for the better part of two decades until 2 Guns was released in 2013, but while that was denied by his publicist, Parriott was left with no other choice but to concede there may have been an element of truth to it.
“The movie definitely didn’t help him,” the filmmaker admitted to The Ringer. “It didn’t encourage him to do other comedies, for sure.” It often gets lost in the shuffle when looking back at his filmography, but Heart Condition endures as not only the first movie he made after winning an Oscar but also the worst he’s ever contributed to. “Racial prejudice I can understand, but ghost prejudice is something new,” his character says at one point, which neatly sums up just how cack-handedly the film approached its subject matter.
