director
Antoine Fuqua
screenwriter
David Ayer
producers
Robert F. Newmyer
Jeffrey Silver
cinematographer
Mauro Fiore
music
Mark Mancina
editor
Conrad Buff
cast
Denzel Washington (Alonzo Harris)
Ethan Hawke (Jake Hoyt)
Scott Glenn (Roger)
Tom Berenger (Stan Gursky)
Harris Yulin (Doug Rosselli)
Raymond J. Barry (Lou Jacobs)
Cliff Curtis (Smiley)
Dr. Dre (Paul)
Snoop Dogg (Blue)
Macy Gray (Sandman's Wife)
mpaa rating: R
running
time: 120m
u.s.
release: 10/5/01
video
availability: VHS -
DVD
official
site
other antoine
fuqua films
reviewed on this website:
- king
arthur
- tears
of the sun
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The tagline of Training
Day is "The only thing more dangerous than the line
being crossed is the cop who will cross it." To this we
might add: The only thing more annoying than a dark, cynical
pose being affected is the Hollywood thriller that will shy away
from it at the end. Training Day spends much of its running
time telling us, in wised-up, street-smart tones, that you have
to become a wolf to catch a wolf; whatever disreputable charge
it carries derives from this down-and-dirty outlook, so when
the movie backtracks and says a wolf who catches other wolves
is still a wolf, it ends up not meaning much. Either go all the
way, or don't go there.
Veteran L.A. narc Alonzo Harris
(Denzel Washington) is the author of the wolf metaphor, among
many others. Alonzo sees himself as a hard-bitten combat veteran
who long ago lost any ideals or illusions about human nature.
Rookie cop Jake Hoyt (Ethan Hawke) is assigned to train under
Alonzo's supervision, ostensibly to prove he has the right stuff
to serve in Alonzo's unit. Like all fresh-faced rookies, Jake
has been given a warm and beautiful wife and baby daughter, as
if we wouldn't care about the fate of a single, childless cop.
Jake rides around the hellholes
of L.A. with Alonzo, who relishes giving the new white boy a
guided tour of places white boys aren't welcome. For a while,
David Ayers' script toys with the notion that Alonzo is the kind
of shady-ethics cop that's needed to get the job done; and if
this were a more serious movie, we might be given to think about
how the brutal demands of the job might turn some cops
into monsters battling with monsters (while other officers retain
their essential decency). The movie could've been about what
kind of person becomes a bad cop and what kind stays clean, or
at least settles for doing no harm.
But this isn't a serious movie,
despite Denzel Washington in full eruption and giving his calloused
lines more weight and authority than they deserve. Denzel Washington
is this movie -- it's his anti-star vehicle, his chance
to stretch his legs in a compelling rare unsympathetic turn.
To defuse charges of racism, the movie carefully includes its
share of corrupt white officers, lurking in shadows in a restaurant
and casually talking about executing a criminal who hoodwinked
the court system (the scene could've been lifted whole and breathing
from The Star Chamber, in which a group of frustrated
judges banded together for vengeance). But essentially Training
Day is about a noble white man against a corrupt black man.
The movie plays at realism;
it plays at a lot of things. But eventually Hollywood takes over
-- the last act is particularly shameful in this regard, and
poor Ethan Hawke (who tries hard, but is miscast) takes so much
punishment that you begin to wonder if his character should headline
the sequel to Unbreakable.
(He bleeds a lot, but he suffers about ten separate mishaps that
should have put him in the hospital.) Director Antoine Fuqua,
who previously distinguished himself by making a bad Chow Yun-Fat
thriller (The Replacement Killers), opts for a brand of
rock-video flash slightly different from that film; this time,
what he's selling is the dark and dangerous energy of the street,
but he's still in the selling business.
Watching Training Day,
I kept remembering a better thriller about a weary black cop,
his eager white partner, and their contrasting ideologies --
Seven,
whose ending was about as bleak as you can imagine, but which
did not send me off vaguely depressed and feeling manipulated.
Perhaps it's because in that film, the war of ideas meant something,
and so did the price paid for it. Here, what you get is a two-hour
wallow that invites you to accept it as the real world, only
to turn on a dime into the fake Hollywood world.
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