The shockingly racist 1990 movie Denzel Washington “needed” to make: “It came at exactly the right time”
There’s enough evidence to suggest that the Oscars curse is a very real thing, but of all the stars who’ve gone from the industry’s highest high to their lowest low in double-quick time, you wouldn’t think of Denzel Washington as one of them.
If you want to split hairs, then he isn’t, since he hadn’t yet claimed his first Academy Award. On the other hand, the incontrovertible truth is that his first big-screen credit after Edward Zwick’s Glory, which won him the prize for ‘Best Supporting Actor’, was and remains the worst movie of his entire career.
To qualify as a victim of the curse, an actor usually follows up the biggest night of their professional life with their onscreen nadir, so technically, Washington missed the cut. However, seven weeks after Glory arrived in cinemas, and less than eight weeks before he took to the stage in front of his peers to collect his Oscar, the risible Heart Condition was released in cinemas.
It’s the sort of thing that nobody batted an eyelid at in February 1990 when it premiered, but today, it’s a horrible piece of work. On paper, Washington and Bob Hoskins as a bickering odd couple does have some amount of potential, but through a modern lens, the execution could generously be called eyebrow-raising.
In director James D Parriott’s caper, the diminutive geezer plays an openly racist cop who loathes Washington’s lawyer, and the latter even dates the former’s ex-girlfriend. When Washington’s Napoleon Stone is killed, though, Hoskins’ Jack Mooney wakes up from a near-fatal heart attack to discover that he’s been gifted his arch-enemy’s ticker.
Obviously, he’s also being haunted by Stone’s ghost, and they form a reluctant partnership to solve his murder. That doesn’t sound too bad, and it may not have been, were it not for the script shoehorning in jokes about the size of Washington’s package or Moony’s shock at discovering that African-Americans enjoy bowling, to which Stone replies, “We swim, too.”
Urban legends have whispered that Washington’s arm was twisted into making Heart Condition by his agent, and the film’s woeful reception, which sees it endure as the worst-reviewed picture he’s ever been in more than 35 years after its release, saw him make the conscious decision to keep comedy at arm’s length for decades.
Whether that’s true or not, the two-time Oscar winner couldn’t be faulted for his enthusiasm before it was released. “The script has humour, wit, zaniness; people haven’t seen me in that light,” he explained. “This is different for me. My friends say I’m crazy, saying I have a good sense of humour, and I’m finally able to show it,” with the star adding that he was “having fun just being silly.”
“It’s great, and it came at exactly the right time,” Washington concluded. “I needed it.” He may have felt that way in 1990, but based on the reception, you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who’d agree with him. Heart Condition is, in fact, an atrocious movie that’s often galling in both its casual and overt racism, and it’s unlikely to ever be dislodged as the worst thing the icon has ever made.
