Training Day (2002)
Grade: B+
Cast: Denzel Washington, Ethan Hawke, Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, and Macy Gray
Director: Antione Fuqua
Rated R for language, violence, brief nudity, drug use, and adult situations


"Training Day" is a fascinating corrupt cop thriller that hasn’t an iota of true originality but manages to be one of the most entertaining movies of 2001 nonetheless. Fueled by Oscar-honored performances by Denzel Washington (who won for Best Actor) and Ethan Hawke (merely nominated in the category of Best Supporting Actor, which garnered controversy since he has some 15 minutes more screen time than Washington), "Training Day" sucks us in from minute one and doesn’t let us go until the flawed but not unsatisfying finale.

Hawke plays Jake Hoyt, a rookie officer set to spend his day in training as a narcotics officer with Alonzo Harris. When the two first meet, Harris comes across as skilled, tough, and profane, but perhaps very successful in his field. Note that that last part is an assumption, fueled by Harris’ boasts (“They build jails cuz of me!”). They soon get out on the streets and Hoyt finds out otherwise. We’re just over half an hour into the movie, and the following has happened: Harris has spoke vulgarly of Hoyt’s wife whom he hasn’t even met, stolen some pot laced with PCP from some pulled over white fellas and forced Hoyt to smoke it at gunpoint without him knowing what exactly it is, and, finally, chosen a brutal beating as punishment for some rapists instead of jail time. And this is before he gets really bad. Just how much worse can he get? Well, I’m not going to reveal any of the plot surprises during the second hour (until this next paragraph---the whole following paragraph is filled with spoilers, so beware), but Harris shifts rapidly from antihero to all-out antagonist as the climax approaches, and Antoine Fuqua pulls all the punches with a rapid-fire intensity and assurance that shoves aside any scripting problems and makes the viewers push plausibility questions to the back of their minds until after the end credits start to roll.

There are flaws in the way we are meant to view Harris. At the beginning, he’s portrayed as king of the hood, respected and admired by everyone despite busting the crackheads that occupy most of the city’s addresses. Near the end, everyone turns against him and realizes he’s evil. So I guess the flaw isn’t in the way we view Harris, but the way the characters in the movie view him. The finale’s mistake is in having the rest of the neighborhood involved at all; the showdown would have been more interesting had it been merely Hoyt on Harris, with Hoyt walking away and Harris driving to meet his fate. The folks in the neighborhood, in return, are displayed as extremely indecisive, as at 4:59 AM they love Alonzo and at 4:59 AM the very next day they hate him. At the end, Hoyt has justifiable reason to loathe Harris, but the origin of his reason is that Harris chooses to “let the animals wipe themselves out,” and Hoyt lowers himself to that very motto at the end, leaving Harris to the Russians that have ordered a hit on him. He’s meant to be seen as defending the act of being a peacekeeper, but he’s simultaneously allowing violence without reprimand (and pretty violent violence at that). My guess is that Hoyt knew exactly what he was doing. He’s too smart to make that mistake and not know that Harris is going to be killed. I think a part of him believed that Harris was right when he said you need to be a part of the street to clean the street, yet he also loathed it since it was against all he had ever learned about what how he was supposed to be a cop. He was basically compromising with his torn vision by rejecting Harris’ lifestyle with disgust while simultaneously, well, killing him. It’s indirect, but Hoyt is basically killing him. This interpretation ends up making Hoyt just as interesting a character as Harris (I’d pay to see a spin-off about Harris’ past and/or Hoyt’s future)---both are complex beings whose souls are being eaten by the filth occupying the streets (Hoyt is being eaten; Harris is a decomposing skeleton), and Hoyt knows it and wants to stop it just as he’s being convinced to accept it. It’s "Taxi Driver"’s Travis Bickle taking all of his hate towards “scum” in a new environment akin to the one of a "Boyz In The Hood."

The performances are fantastic. Washington occupies a role unlike anything he’s ever done before (just set Harris next to the saintly football coach in "Remember the Titans" and the busted-out-by-love boxer in "The Hurricane," whose profession is much too violent for his nice personality, and do a little comparing and contrasting), but he occupies it with just as much skill as he has in the previous roles. Just study his eyes. As Harris is interrupted while reading his newspaper, he looks up at Hoyt with a menace that implies he would probably kill him, if just for that interruption. There’s a small, deliciously sadistic glint in his eyes as, when referring to the pot-&-PCP incident, utters the line, “You’re an adult, it was your decision. It’s not like you were held at gunpoint.” So while some argue that it’s just the role Washington has received accolades for, I disagree. He’s a scarily unpredictable wild card, yet you also have a “Why am I so surprised?” feeling after each crucial event since Harris’ malevolence has been building since the moment the camera revealed him to us. He makes The French Connection’s Popeye Doyle look like Mary Poppins. Hawke is also fabulous, distressed by all the corruption and scandal he’s witnessed and become entangled in--all the wicked, unexpected terror--yet striving to find a morally correct way out of it until he realizes he may have to take an ethical shortcut.

Three rappers (well, one of them being titled as a rapper is a stretch) have small roles in the film: Snoop Dogg, Dr. Dre, and Macy Gray. Macy Gray plays the wife of “Sandman,” an unseen drug dealer; Dr. Dre plays a buddy of Harris’ who acts as if the cover-ups are typical of everyday life and doesn’t like Hoyt; Snoop Dogg is a druggie in a wheelchair. Of those, Snoop Dogg is the only one who’s really good, and Macy Gray is the only one who’s really not.

The script, as I’ve said, isn’t really anything new in the outlines…it’s the way everything is presented that offers to give us anything refreshing, and it does. The dialogue is crisp and sizzling with a slightly witty cynicism, and each plot twist is mildly obvious in hindsight but rather unexpected as it unfolds. It’s one of "Training Day"’s virtues that even though those plot twists are, as I said, mildly obvious in hindsight, a repeat viewing actually works (and I know, as I've now seen it three times).

Finally, "Training Day" is an underrated almost-classic, a gem of a cop versus cop thriller. It is not for the faint of heart---the MPAA wasn't kidding when they called the violence brutal, the language pervasive, and also noted the drugs and nudity. Its brutality is part of why it feels like an accurate depiction of the street life (far more than the balls-less "Hardball," which I watched the following day), although I could be way off on my perception. There is nothing in it that I can relate to, and it offers no complete comic relief or all-out emotional scenes. It’s a grim, gripping drama from start to finish, and as it’s so impersonal when paralleled to my emotions, I had to identify with it as pure entertainment. It was exactly that. There’s nothing wrong with being pure entertainment and there’s really not a lot wrong with "Training Day."


-Alex, June 2002