Training Day: Blu-ray disc DVD Review

(Originally published Oct. 5, 2001)

In Antoine Fuqua’s “Training Day,” Denzel Washington takes to the screen and bullies just about everyone—the characters, his co-stars, the audience—with a performance that’s at once compelling--and repelling.

As Alonzo Harris, a dirty L.A.P.D. narcotics cop out to prove to the world that he’s one mean S.O.B. worth fearing, Washington becomes a larger-than-life caricature, railing at the screen with a scene-chewing showiness that feels as if his ego and libido are trying to blow holes through everything.

It’s easy to see why he took the role. After being locked down for years as cinema’s long-standing good guy, a taste of evil had to be seductive. But the change of pace is almost too liberating for the actor, who is so overpowering as Harris, none of the other actors stand a chance opposite him.

The film follows Jake Hoyt (Ethan Hawke), a naive, idealistic cop with a wife and child who has the misfortune of becoming Harris’ rookie partner.

He pays the price for it. In the course of one extremely long day, Harris puts Hoyt through an unbelievable series of events, from urging him to smoke pot laced with PCP, which he does, to threatening him to take the blame for a murder he didn’t commit, which he also does.

During the film’s first half, there doesn’t seem to be a limit to what Hoyt will do to please his new boss, which not only suggests that audiences are dealing with a total idiot who doesn’t know when to walk away from a bad situation, but which pushes the film’s naive rookie routine to an inevitable breaking point.

Like most American action films, “Training Day” is at its best when it unleashes its maelstrom of bullets or when it sends its characters fleeing in one of the film’s several thrilling chase scenes; the violence gives the production a kick.

Fuqua, who directed music videos before scoring big in “The Replacement Killers,” also gets many of the small details right, such as the tense snapshots of inner-city life in the rougher sections of Los Angeles, or when Macy Gray and Snoop Dog appear in effective cameos as two crack-head hustlers struggling to keep it together.

But with Washington filling the screen from start to bloody finish with a performance that’s at once grand and absolutely shameless, everything else withers in the shade of his all-powerful persona. There’s no question that the man is a brilliant actor, but in “Training Day,” there’s also no question that it’s he who turns what could have been your ordinary, everyday thriller into an absolute melodrama.

Grade: C