Will Smith has made some massive big hits in the industry before his supposed downfall after the Oscar slap gate fiasco. If anyone noticed, most of his works were always crime centric with him playing a friendly and sometimes serious, cop.

While his upcoming historical thriller, Emancipation has already started making noise, it is time we revisit some of his cop hits and Will’s character arc over the course of his works. The King Richard star has made nearly six to seven movies of such a genre. Here is a curated list of his works where he exclusively portrayed a policeman of sorts.  

Top 5 Will Smith movie to check out as you await Emancipation

Starting with Smith’s signpost movie franchise, Men in Black comes synonymous each time we talk about the star. Playing the character of Jay throughout the four movies, Smith works for a highly funded yet unofficial government agency that tries to unfold mysteries of intergalactic terrorists.

He, along with his top colleague, Kay digs out of New York City with their pro detective skills, trying to prevent a detected assassination by one of the terrorists. As nerve-chilling as it sounds, this franchise has proved to be one of the best by Will Smith ever. 

This narcotics dealer chaser is a saga of three films. Hollywood A-listers, Martin Lawrence and Will Smith, play two top-tier narcotics detectives in the series. While they try to keep a murder witness secure, they investigate a case of heroin recovered at their police office premises. After Men in Black, this is said to be Smith’s top detective movie of all time. 

This is purely a police-driven story by Will Smith, where he plays the central character, of course. His character is Daryl Ward, a top officer of the Los Angeles Police Department. He is partnered with the nation’s first orc officer, Nick Jakoby. Together, they are to figure out a magic wand before the ‘bad guys’ get their hands on it. Sadly, the movie was not as highly rated as expected. Nevertheless, this comes as one of the striking episodes of movies that question IMDb’s credibility. 

This is one of the very few Will Smith movies that have unrealistic elements or as considered to be so far. This might become a new normal as AIs across the world continue building up their robot clans. However, back in 2004, Will once again played the detective role, this time from Chicago. This has an interesting twist with robots and Smith, which we would like to keep safe without spoiling it for you. 

To learn more about the dark history with robots, watch the movie for yourself. As of now, this masterpiece is exclusively available only on Apple TV. 

As the name suggests, this movie is about Smith as Robert Clayton Dean, tracking down a kingpin in the suburbs of the US capital, Washington DC. Slightly different from the detective role he usually slays, the actor plays a mastermind yet a mild-mannered lawyer who snaps back after being targeted by some NSA goon. Smelling a potential political crime ahead, Robert must root out the criminal boss before he makes his move. 

Which of these five have you seen? Comment below.