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Denzel Washington’s Overlooked Boxing Classic Is Officially Leaving Netflix

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2025 was a relatively quiet year for Denzel Washington, the two-time Oscar-winner who is best known for his roles in Training Day, The Equalizer, and Glory. Washington reunited with director Spike Lee for Highest 2 Lowest, which is based on the famous Akira Kurosawa crime thriller, High and Low. The film spent weeks at the top of streaming charts before finally being dethroned by newer releases. In 2024, Washington worked under director Ridley Scott for his return to the colosseum for Gladiator II, the legacy sequel to the 2000 Oscar-winning film starring Russell Crowe. Washington will return to the big screen soon for his new crime thriller, Here Comes the Flood, which co-stars Robert Pattinson. While it was previously thought that Here Comes the Flood would premiere in 2026, the film has seemingly been delayed to 2027.

Denzel Washington has been starring in iconic movies since the 1980s, and it’s now been over 25 years since one of his most underrated movies, The Hurricane, hit theaters. The boxing epic is the perfect mash-up of Rocky and The Shawshank Redemption, with elements of visceral fighting paired with heartfelt scenes set in a prison. The Hurricane has found a home streaming on Netflix this year, but that unfortunately won’t be the case for much longer. Netflix announced not long ago that the film is leaving streaming at the end of the month, meaning the last day to watch The Hurricane will be on August 31. A new streaming home for the film has not yet been announced, but it wouldn’t be surprising to see it show up on a rival platform like HBO Max or Paramount Plus in September.

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Collider Exclusive · Action Hero Quiz
Which Action Hero Would Be
Your Perfect Partner?

Rambo · James Bond · Indiana Jones · John McClane · Ethan Hunt

Five legends. Five completely different ways of getting out alive — with style, with muscle, with charm, with luck, or with a plan so intricate it probably shouldn’t work. Ten questions will reveal which action hero was built to have your back.

🎖️Rambo

🍸James Bond

🏺Indiana Jones

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🔧John McClane

🎭Ethan Hunt

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01

You’re dropped into a dangerous situation with no warning. What do you need most from a partner?
The first few seconds tell you everything about who belongs beside you.





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02

You have to get somewhere dangerous, fast. How do you travel?
How you get there is half the mission.





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03

You’re pinned down and outnumbered. What does your ideal partner do?
This is when you find out what someone is really made of.





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04

The mission is paused. You have one evening to decompress. What does your partner suggest?
Who someone is when the pressure drops is who they actually are.





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05

How do you prefer your partner to communicate mid-mission?
Good communication is the difference between partners and a liability.





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06

Your enemy is powerful, well-resourced, and has the upper hand. How should your partner approach them?
The approach to the enemy defines the partnership.





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07

Things go badly wrong and you’re captured. What do you trust your partner to do?
Who someone is when you need them most is the only thing that matters.





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08

What does your ideal partner bring to the table that you couldn’t replace?
A great partner fills the gap you didn’t know you had.





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09

Every partnership has a cost. Which of these can you live with?
No one comes without baggage. The question is whether you can carry it together.





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10

It’s the final moment. Everything is on the line. What do you need from your partner right now?
The last question is the most honest one.





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Your Partner Has Been Assigned
Your Perfect Partner Is…

Your answers have pointed to one action hero above all others. This is the person built to have your back — for better or considerably, spectacularly worse.

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Rambo

Your partner doesn’t talk much, doesn’t need to, and will have assessed every threat in your immediate environment before you’ve finished your first sentence. John Rambo is not a man of plans or politics — he is a force of nature shaped by survival, loyalty, and a capacity for endurance that goes beyond anything training can produce. He will not leave you behind. He has never left anyone behind who deserved to come home. What you get with Rambo is the most capable, most quietly ferocious partner imaginable — one who has been through things that would have broken anyone else, and who chose to keep going anyway. You’ll never need to ask if he has your back. You’ll just know.

James Bond

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Your partner will arrive perfectly dressed, perfectly briefed, and with a cover story so convincing it’ll take you a moment to remember what’s actually true. James Bond is the most professionally dangerous person in any room he enters — and the most disarmingly charming, which is the point. He operates in a world of layers, where nothing is what it appears and every advantage is used without apology. You’ll never be bored. You’ll occasionally be furious. But when it matters — when the mission is genuinely on the line and the margin for error has collapsed to nothing — Bond is exactly the partner you want. He has survived things that have no business being survivable. He does it with style. That is not nothing.

Indiana Jones

Your partner will know the history, the language, the cultural context, and exactly why the thing everyone else is ignoring is actually the most important thing in the room. Indiana Jones is brilliant, reckless, and occasionally impossible — but he is also one of the most resourceful, most genuinely knowledgeable partners you could find yourself beside. He approaches every situation with a scholar’s eye and a brawler’s instinct, which is an unusual combination and a remarkably effective one. He hates snakes and gets personally attached to objects of historical significance, both of which will slow you down at least once. It doesn’t matter. What Indy brings is irreplaceable — and the adventures you’ll have together will be the kind people write books about. Assuming you survive them.

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John McClane

Your partner was not supposed to be here. He does not have the right equipment, the right information, or anything approaching the right odds. He has a sarcastic remark and an absolute refusal to accept that the situation is as bad as it looks. John McClane is the greatest accidental hero in the history of action cinema — a man whose superpower is stubbornness, whose contingency plan is improvisation, and whose capacity to absorb punishment and keep moving would be alarming if it weren’t so useful. He will complain the entire time. He will make it significantly more chaotic than it needed to be. And he will absolutely, unconditionally, without question come through when it counts. Yippee-ki-yay.

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Ethan Hunt

Your partner has already run seventeen scenarios by the time you’ve finished reading the briefing, and the plan he’s settled on involves at least two things that should be physically impossible. Ethan Hunt operates at the absolute edge of human capability — technically, physically, and intellectually — and he brings the same relentless precision to protecting his partners that he brings to dismantling organisations that shouldn’t exist. He is not easy to know and he will never fully tell you everything. But he will carry the weight of the mission so completely, so absolutely, that your job is simply to trust him — and the remarkable thing is that trusting him always turns out to be the right call. The mission will be impossible. He will complete it anyway.

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What Is ‘The Hurricane’ About?

The official synopsis for The Hurricane, which also stars Liev Schreiber and Clancy Brown, reads as follows: “Rubin ‘Hurricane’ Carter (Denzel Washington) is a middleweight boxing contender wrongfully convicted of a triple murder, sentenced to life behind bars for a crime he didn’t commit. As decades pass, a determined teenager and his devoted Canadian mentors uncover the truth buried in the case. Together, they fight to free an innocent man and expose a justice system gone wrong.” The Hurricane earned 82% from critics and 87% from audiences on the aggregate site Rotten Tomatoes. The film is inspired by two books, The 16th Round by Rubin ‘Hurricane’ Carter and Lazarus and the Hurricane by Sam Chaiton and Terry Swinton. Armyan Bernstein and Dan Gordon wrote the script for the film with Norman Jewison directing.

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Check out The Hurricane before it leaves Netflix at the end of this month and stay tuned to Collider for more updates and coverage of Denzel Washington’s future projects.


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Release Date
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September 17, 1999

Runtime

146 Minutes

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Director

Norman Jewison

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