Training Day

2001

Training Day
"Awesome. An awesome movie"
Josh Block (Exit Poll)
In his most nefarious film role yet, Denzel Washington keeps the audience stumbling off balance,
forcing them to ponder whether his unorthodox crime-fighting methods are justifiable radicalism or
a deviant abuse of power. With bawdy humor and grudging praise providing counterpoint to his fierce
stares and verbal intimidation, it's difficult to determine whether he's toughening a protégé through trial by fire,
or laughing at a patsy he despises. . As he struggles with his conscience, an increasingly alarmed Hoyt
begins to suspect that he's not really being given an audition at all; he's being set up as the fall guy in an elaborate scheme.




Antoine Fuqua's Training Day is a violent, vigorous film sure to leave
fvc viewers uneasily processing their feelings about it. In that climate of renewed reverence for the police, the
film's exaggerated portrayal of narcotics officers can't help but feel a bit uncharitable. Still, there's immediacy
to the thesis that these undercover cops are so ornately jeweled, so hip to street culture, and so entrenched in
their renegade philosophies that they become indistinguishable from the gangsters they're hunting. The film
also understands how this world is governed by bravado, as Washington astutely and systematically manipulates
Ethan Hawke's eagerness to prove he's man enough for the job. Washington alternates between visceral intensity
and mere showiness in a role that's courageously unlikable, while Hawke makes the most of a soft, underwritten
character. Even while including a handful of stylized camera tricks, Fuqua maintains a tense realism by filming
in some of L.A.'s worst neighborhoods, using his own street credibility to convince real drug dealers and low-lifes
to appear in the film. No less challenging for its flawed sensationalism, Training Day is bracing cinema. -- Derek Armstrong