Review of Training Day (2001) by Josh M — 06 Feb 2012

Training Day is a gripping thriller, despite the fact that it trades in rusty corrupt cop and film noir cliches, plus a wack of borrowed scenes from other movies.

This is due to the talents of three men who elevate this into something truly special: Denzel Washington, charismatic leading man doing the best work of his career as a bad guy (he should do more bad ass dudes, and won Oscar for this), Ethan Hawke, who takes on the earnest and idealistic rookie role and makes a meal of it, has never been better, and super talented director Antoine Fuqua, who insisted the real locations and extras, creating a versimilitude of inner city of Los Angeles in a way that has never been done better in a mainstream Hollywood potboiler.

The naive rookie coupled with the corrupt veteran has been done a million times, but this works because of the superb chemistry of Denzel and Ethan, and a black humour that coexists on the knife edge of menace.

On the down side, the last act and its resolution trades in ridiculous unlikely coincidences that make no sense, but we as viewers are already on board for the ride, so the filmmakers get away with it. For example (spoiler alert) Denzel steals money from his best pal and cruelly executes him just so the greek tragedy is set up for the end. Later, the whole hood, to a man, that Denzel controls conveniently turn against him, for no apparent reason, leading to his demise.

Then there are echos of other scenes from better movies such as the Godfather, Sonny Corleone's legendarily brutal machine gun execution which is recreated almost verbatim. See if you can spot others.

All in all, a good way to spend two hours, provided you don't expect much originality.