The career of Denzel Washington is mostly a consistency model. After officially breaking through with his Oscar-nominated performance as South African activist Steve Biko in "Cry Freedom," he's alternated deftly between prestige roles and strictly commercial parts. There were missteps, but you can at least understand why he signed on to another comedy like Heart Condition; he hadn't yet won his Oscar for Glory, and the prospect of starring opposite an extraordinarily talented performer like Bob Hoskins must have seemed appealing in theory. The movie is terrible, but neither Washington nor Hoskins are phoning it in.

And yet there was a feeling among some in 1992 that Washington a brilliantly multifaceted performance in Spike Lee's Malcolm X will put an end to frivolities like "Heart Condition" and "Ricoche". It's intriguing to think what might have happened if the Academy hadn't decided that '92 was the year to honor the oft-maligned Al Pacino for "Hoo-hah" - all over the screen in Scent of a Woman. Would Washington have turned around and given so many pure commercial performances if he won the best actor award he richly deserves?

Maybe not. Because according to Washington's career strategy, these films had a specific degree of merit.

In a recent interview with The TimesWashington has revealed that he made the decisions some find questionable because he respects the hell out of a paycheck. According to the star, “Well, in life, you learn, you earn and then you give back — kind of give back. So, if your life is 90 years long, until 30 you study and from 30 to 60 you earn."

By this metric, Washington's time to "earn" officially ended in 2014, the year he officially launched his first successful franchise in The Equalizer (he tried and failed to get franchise based on the novels by Walter Mosley, Lesnie Rawlins rolling in 1995). This strategy is completely understandable, but does Washington regret the less-than-spectacular films he made as a result of working this way? “After 'Malcolm X' I made real clunkers. Look for them — I won't say their names,'' he said.

Look, nobody bought a ticket to "Virtuosity," "The Fallen," or "The Bone Collector" because they were expecting "Malcolm X Part II." As someone who paid to see all three, I went because I like watching Washington do its thing. As I wrote when I ranked Tony Scott moviesit's immensely satisfying to watch Washington deliver an untamed star turn. And this shouldn't be controversial because that's what stars are for! That's all Cary Grant has done and many consider him the platonic ideal of a Hollywood movie star.

Furthermore, Virtuosity and Fallen are not bad movies at all! The former is a half-thoughtful, half-moronic sci-fi actioner that pits Washington against a pre-star Russell Crowe, while the latter is a great horror flick with some nerve-wracking set pieces. The Bone Collector, however, is straight up garbage.

Either way, Washington is still cashing in and has no plans to let off the gas because, as he announced during the Gladiator II press tour, two more "Equalizer" movies are on the way. They probably won't win an Oscar, but they will allow us to spend a few hours in the company of Washington, which is a bargain at any price.