Training Day

Directed by Antoine Fuqua

Starring: Denzel Washington, Ethan Hawke, Dr. Dre, Snoop Dog, and Tom Berenger

By now you are surely aware of the fact that Denzel Washington was nominated and won the Oscar for Best Actor for his role in Training Day. And obviously this is a topic that I will discuss in reviewing this film. But before getting to that, I will discuss the overall movie first. Training Day is a very prototypical crooked cop type film. You have a good cop, Ethan Hawke, who "coincidentally" is white, and a bad cop, Denzel Washington, who is black. Some bad stuff happens which leads you to believe that the bad cop is bad. And then the good cop must do what is right for law and order to exist within society. This film delivers no new insights into the world of the police and fails to deliver any type of strong message that one might expect from this type of film. Plus, Denzel Washington had no business winning the Oscar for this film.

The film centers on the relationship between two cops, Alonzo Harris (Denzel Washington) and Jake Hoyt (Ethan Hawke). And most of the film is spent observing these two men as they drive around in Harris’ pimped out car. The driving sequences are occasionally broken up throughout the film for brief times, such as when they bust a wheelchair-bound crack dealing Snoop Dog and when Harris goes for a mid-afternoon sex break with his mistress. Fuqua does a nice job with some of these car interior shots as the two men are very often shown alone in one-shots and divided two shots, which isn’t easy to do in a moving vehicle. But outside of the car, Fuqua does nothing. The most interesting stuff outside of the car is that they got to shoot sequences in the Imperial Court neighborhood in L.A., a notorious gang area which had previously been off limits to anyone with a camera. These sequences are not very interesting, but the fact that they got to do them is.

So now its time to discuss the acting and the Oscar situation. First off, let me say that I think Denzel Washington is a very good actor. And this role is quite different from anything he has ever done before. But he did NOT deserve the Oscar for Best Actor for this film. Washington plays the role well and he is believable, but the part sucks. It generally has stupid lines and over the top swearing. Clearly the Academy tried to use this film to make up for 74 years of racist voting. But I’m not fooled. This film, which received acting nominations for both Hawke and Washington, was one of three films which received two or more acting nominations but did not get nominated for Best Picture (Ali, which also stars a black male in a leading role, and Iris were the other two). Washington did deserve an Oscar for Best Picture, but this was not the film that he earned it for.

When you come right down to it, this film is really a lot of fluff. The film fails to deliver a strong message about anything. By the end, I didn’t know if the viewer was supposed to see the problems of police corruption, the problems of gang violence, the problems of drugs or the problems of a bad script. The film stays on the paths of its predecessor cop movies, but never goes one foot of the path to deal with any real issues. There are really only two reasons to see this movie: 1. The chase seen where Ethan Hawke tries to run down a wheelchair-bound Snoop Dog is easily the best chase seen in years, and 2. On the DVD there is the outrageously terrible alternate ending that is cool to see because it has Tom Berenger talking to Hawke and calling him by name, Jake, which is Berenger’s name in the brilliant baseball film, Major League (Note: Don’t even think about saying that there was a sequel to Major League, because we’ll all be better off if we repress that memory). The Academy has once again with this film, tried to make up for the fact that they screwed someone over in the past by screwing over a truly deserving performance. But giving an Oscar for this average performance by Washington degrades his ability and screws another excellent actor, Tom Wilkinson, out of the opportunity to win the coveted award. So skip this movie and go watch In The Bedroom or Malcolm X instead.

RATING : 35%