Ebert continued, “He plays Alonzo as the meanest, baddest narcotics cop in the city--a dude who cruises the mean streets in his confiscated customized Caddy, extracting tribute and accumulating graft like a medieval warlord shaking down his serfs.” His pose is that the job must be done this way: If you don’t intimidate the street, it will kill you. This is the lesion he’s teaching Jake Hoyt, played by Ethan Hawke, a young cop who dreams of being promoted to the elite narcotics squad. This is Jake’s first day of training, and he’s being trained by Alonzo to see the reality of streets. Jake’s dream: Get a promotion so he can move his wife and child to a nicer house. This may not become a smart career move. Just as a warm-up, Alonzo forces him to smoke a joint (it turns out to be spiked with PCP): If you turn down gifts on the street, he’s told, “you’ll be dead.” He watches as Jake stops two punks who are raping a girl, and then instead of arresting the rapists, Alonzo carefully and proficiently beats them.
Ridding street justice is what this is all about, Alonzo thinks. The enemy lives outside the law, and you have to chase them there. Jake hallucinates for a while because of the PCP, but decides to join Alonzo on a visit to an old and evil colleague, played by Scott Glenn, on a raid on a drug dealer’s house, on a visit to what looks like Alonzo’s secret second family, and to a restaurant rendezvous with what looks like a group of the best cops who are skilled in graft and payoffs. On their mission there’s a great gun fight, although it doesn’t get enough attention to interrupt Alonzo’s routine. Ebert said, “I'm not saying all of these events in one day are impossible; in the real world, however, by the end of it both cops would be exhausted, and shaking for a druggist for Ben-Gay.”
Is Alonzo being real? Are the city and its cops really this evil? (Ebert said, “I am asking about the movie, not life.”) At first, we think if Alonzo isn’t putting on a show to test the new guy. The new guy thinks that as well – that if he yields to attraction, he’ll get caught. That thought comes to an end when Jake is ordered to kill someone, or be framed for the murder, anyway. Alonzo isn’t the exception to the rule: We can tell by the lunchtime meeting that he’s part of the ruling area.
For Denzel Washington, “Training Day” is a rare antagonist role. He doesn’t look, sound or move like his usual likable characters, and definitely there’s no sign of the football coach from “Remember The Titans.” The movie, directed by Antoine Fuqua and written by David Ayer keeps pushing him, and by the end, it looks like it pushed him right into real fantasy. Antoine in the earlier scenes looks extreme but maybe believable. By the end, he’s like a criminal from a horror film, indestructible and ruthless.
Ebert said, “A lot of people are going to be leaving the theater as I did, wondering about the logic and plausibility of the last 15 minutes.” There are times when you’re distracted from the action on the screen by the need to go back through the story and try to put together how events could really have ended up this way. However, Ayer’s screenplay is incredible in the way it gives clues and pays them off in unusual ways, so that “Training Day” makes as much sense as movies like this usually can. It might have been better if it had stayed closer to reality, but it doesn’t want to be.
Ebert admitted, “For its kinetic energy and acting zeal, I enjoyed the movie. I like it when actors go for broke.” Ethan Hawke is well cast as the cop who believes “we serve and protect” but has trouble accepting the teaching of Alonzo’s style of serving and protection.
The supporting roles are well-done, especially the retired cop played by Glenn, who looks like he’s sitting on a completely different hidden story. Ebert said, “Aware as I was of its loopholes and excesses, the movie persuaded me to go along for the ride. Of course you can't watch the movie without thinking of the Rodney King and O.J. Simpson sagas, two sides of the same coin, both suggesting the Los Angeles police are not perfect. I found myself wondering what would have happened if the movie had flipped the races, with a rotten white cop showing a black rookie the ropes. Given the way the movie pays off, that might have been doable. But it would have involved flipping the itinerary of the street tours, too; instead of the black cop planting the white boy in the middle of hostile non-white environments, you'd have the white cop taking the black rookie to the white drug-lords; gated mansions in "Traffic" (2001) come to mind.” Not as enjoyable.
Will viewers accept this movie in today’s time, when cops and firemen are known as heroes? Ebert said, “I think maybe so; I think by delaying the movie's opening two weeks, Warner Bros. sidestepped a potential backlash.” Denzel’s performance really got a lot of attention. Second question: It’s been asked if violent movies will become rare after the sad days after the terrorism. The box-office performance of “Training Day” had given the answer.
This is a very surprising movie, especially when seeing Denzel play the villain. I had started watching this movie some time back, but then I ended up watching the whole movie and I was hooked. This is a great movie that I think all of you should check out. If you have not seen this movie and you like Denzel Washington, then you should see it because you will love it and be surprised by seeing him play the villain. He should do it again because he plays a very convincing villain.
Check out next week when I look at a movie that will be defended in “Denzel Washington Month.”
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