While the story line of this 2001 police thriller is little more than the usual Hollywood potboiler, I have to admit that Denzel Washington is dazzling in the lead role.
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I found "Training Day" somewhat problematic for me. I loved Denzel Washington in the title role, but I didn't care overmuch for the movie itself. There's nothing problematic about the movie's new HD-DVD transfer, though. High definition lives up to its hype.
Nevertheless, when I first heard that high definition was coming to DVD, I was both excited and apprehensive. I had been living with hi-def cable broadcasts for several years and enjoying them; but I still didn't quite trust the reliability of HD hardware in my home theater. Fortunately, my fears proved largely groundless, as the first half dozen HD-DVDs I've watched have played flawlessly (with the exception of one momentary and unrepeatable pause in the playback of one disc, caused undoubtedly by a speck of dust). I had no trouble whatsoever with "Training Day," and I continue to marvel at its picture quality.
First, a few words about the movie itself. While the story line of this 2001 police thriller is little more than the usual Hollywood potboiler, I have to admit that Denzel Washington is dazzling in the lead role. Ethan Hawke is in there somewhere, too, managing to hold his own while Washington is turning in the kind of dramatics that have "Oscar" written all over them. Given the high caliber of the acting and the tough, gritty action of the plot, it's hard not to recommend the movie. Yet to anyone even vaguely interested in serious crime dramas, I can't really cite "Training Day" as much more than an overwrought morality play. That may come as harsh news to audiences who thought "Training Day" was the best thriller in years. I'll just say that for me the movie included one of the best performances of the year and hope that keeps fans off my back.
Let me begin by laying out the film's major problem. Most cops, and I've had a family full of them, tell me they've seldom, if ever, drawn their gun. Washington, as L.A. undercover narcotics officer Alonzo Harris, waves his Beretta continuously, using it the way John Madden uses his hands to call a Super Bowl game. Harris always seems to have his gun out, not only shooting it but pointing it at everyone in sight, including his own partner. It pretty much sums up the whole picture; it takes itself very seriously, yet it's so far over the top that it quickly reaches the point of the absurd. If its tone hadn't been so solemn, I might have accepted the film wholeheartedly as a good, tense police melodrama. It isn't so. It wants very much to be taken as a slice of real life, telling it like it is on drug-ridden L.A. city streets; sorry, I couldn't buy it for more than the first few minutes, which, by the way, showed a great deal of promise.
All of the action takes place during a single day, and there's enough action in this one short period to fill the entire career of a normal cop. Hawke plays Jake Hoyl, a young rookie assigned to veteran narcotics cop Harris. Hoyl is supposed to learn the ropes from the old pro, and does he ever! You see, Harris is about the most corrupt cop to ever wear a badge. This guy takes a chapter from Gary Oldman's despicable policeman in "Leon, the Professional." I mean, Harris thinks nothing of bribing folks, beating them up, even killing them if he doesn't get his way. Not only that, he's demanding, mean spirited, and downright grumpy. Not the kind of guy you'd want over for a quiet game of Monopoly around the dining room table. He'd as soon shoot you as look at you and would seem to get a kick out of it, too, which maybe accounts for his having no friends. One of the first things he insists his new partner do is light up a pipe in their unmarked patrol car and get high; he says it's good for Hoyl's street image if he's working undercover. Then Harris takes Hoyl into the hoods where he shows him how to roust people just for the hell of it, including scaring the bejabbers out of some young college kids they see buying an ounce of weed.
Harris becomes downright vicious as the day goes on and becomes almost a caricature of every sadistic cop we've ever seen in the movies. He believes in street justice and will do anything to make his point. He explains to Hoyl that "to protect the sheep, you gotta catch the wolf. And it takes a wolf to catch a wolf." Or it takes a thief to catch a thief. Nothing is beneath him. You do whatever you have to do to get the job done. You have to become the wolf. He knows every degenerate in town, including a big-time drug hustler named Roger, played by Scott Glenn, and he's willing to double-cross anyone to get his way. Tattooed on his arm is his motto, "Death is certain. Life is not."
Harris takes his young protégé around town, showing him the business they're in, and wherever they go from the lowest-income neighborhoods to the poshest restaurants, every adult they meet is nothing but the vilest of the vile, the most offensive, rotten, conniving, felonious, backstabbing scum bags or dope addicts imaginable. These lowlifes congregate on sidewalks, in doorways, on street corners, a sea of putrefaction in all directions, without a smile for anyone. Although the innocent Hoyl strives mightily to remain above the stench, it's hard for him not to be contaminated when the decay is everywhere. Now, as I've suggested, this complete polarization of good and evil might be acceptable in a lightweight Bruce Willis or Arnold Schwarzenegger action flick, but in a movie like "Training Day" that tries to establish a weightier tone, its extreme biases strain credibility.
There is a moment in the film, however, when we sense that maybe, just maybe, Harris actually might believe he's doing the right thing through his wrongheaded actions; he's perhaps even showing a fatherly concern for his young charge. But director Antoine Fuqua ("Bait," "The Replacement Killers") doesn't dwell on it long enough for it to become much of an issue. Instead, because everyone in authority appears to look the other way when Harris's unorthodox methods produce results, the movie seems to suggest that the apparent good guys are as corrupt as the criminals they go after. Certainly, there are bad eggs in every carton, and we all recognize that law enforcement is not always the foundation of purity we'd like it to be, as real-life scandals in the L.A. police department have revealed. But so off-kilter and one-sided a view of police work as presented here is about as contemptuous as it gets. Not even Alonzo's bosses, two of whom are played in cameos by Tom Berenger and Harris Yulin, are honest, leaving a really bad taste in one's mouth when it's through, like maybe the deck's been stacked entirely against us.
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