Training Day | Film Review

FILM MOVIE REVIEW

Training Day ***

by Ed Gonzalez on October 5, 2001 Jump to Comments (0) or Add Your Own

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Antoine Fuqua's Training Day is a rock-solid Hollywood thriller that traces a corrupt cop's twisted abuse of the innocent. While Alonzo Harris (Denzel Washington) isn't the kind of meaty religious cripple worthy of Ferrara, he's a roughneck cop who eschews a pathology far more terrifying than that of Harvey Keitel's bad lieutenant. Fuqua's gracefully scripted chamber piece delicately traces the business of crime; here, cops (referred to as pigs) and thugs become indistinguishable from one another in the big time game of drugs and money. Jake Hoyt (Ethan Hawke) is the rookie: Alonzo's "nigger," "bitch" and, ultimately, fall guy. Halfway through Fuqua's exploitative action yarn, Alonzo is revealed to be more than just an over-aggressive do-gooder—he's a self-serving criminal who uses his police badge to overpower a ghetto-full of black brothers. While Training Day may feel like Washington's one-man terror show, the narrative is ironic and succinct. An order of white men (two cops and a DA) toast the fact that a petty criminal successfully convinced a jury of his insanity by shoving peanut butter into his ass cheeks and eating it before his sentencing was announced. Alonzo is cut from the same vein; he feels that if he successfully works the system, he deserves his freedom. By film's end Alonzo becomes not unlike a piece of stagnant meat thrown into a ghetto coliseum by an empowered Jake and forced to take on the hungry, vengeful brothers he was supposed to protect. Business is business in Training Day but, in the end, it's all about who has your back.

Director(s): Antoine Fuqua
Screenplay: David Ayer
Cast: Denzel Washington, Ethan Hawke, Scott Glenn, Eve Mendes, Charlotte Ayanna, Tom Berenger, Snoop Dogg, Harris Yulin, Raymond J. Barry, Cliff Curtis, Emilio Rivera, Dr. Dre, Macy Gray
Distributor: Warner Bros.
Runtime: 120 min.
Rating: R
Year: 2001