movies
What: "Training Day"
Where: Southwind Twelve, 3433 Iowa
Ticket information: 832-0880
Good cop, bad cop
Star power of Washington and Hawke elevate police drama above grim setting
DENZEL WASHINGTON, center, plays a veteran cop assigned to teach a rookie (Ethan Hawke, right) what life is like on the streets of Los Angeles in "Training Day."
By Loey Lockerby
mag@ljworld.com
How do you rid a city of crime while retaining your sense of right and wrong? Can that even be done, or do you have to get as dirty as the people you're dealing with in order to bring them down? These are questions law enforcement personnel must grapple with on a daily basis, and they're central to "Training Day," a gritty new drama that never lives up to its ambitions, but gives it a hell of a try anyway.
Ethan Hawke plays Jake Hoyt, a rookie Los Angeles cop who gets what looks like a plum assignment, riding along with veteran narcotics officer Alonzo Harris (Denzel Washington). If Jake passes his "training day," he'll be part of Alonzo's elite team, which will help him move up the ranks and have the kind of career he really wants. As the day goes on, however, Jake realizes that his new boss has not only crossed the ethical line, he's obliterated it. Alonzo is a thief and a murderer who justifies his behavior by claiming it's the only way to clean up the streets, and the idealistic Jake must decide if he can accept this reasoning or hold onto his deeply-held principles.
Writer David Ayer ("U-571") and director Antoine Fuqua ("The Replacement Killers") both grew up in rough urban neighborhoods, with Ayer hailing from South Central L.A., and "Training Day" has a warts-and-all authenticity that pulls viewers right into a world where drug dealing and
Review
Rating: ★★1/2
(R)
gang shoot-outs are a way of life. There's also a real effort to get inside the heads of cops like Alonzo, who honestly believe they have to break all the rules in order to do their jobs. The constant danger these people live with infuses every scene, and the violence, while certainly graphic, is never glorified. Instead, it's shown for what it is: ugly, frightening and dehumanizing.
Once Fuqua and Ayer set up this environment and the moral conflicts it creates, they can't seem to figure out what to do with it. Most of the problem lies with the way Alonzo is written. He's such a psycho, it's hard to feel too sympathetic for him although we are apparently supposed to. He is presented as a good cop who got pushed over the edge, but this seems unlikely, especially when it is revealed that outrageous bond his
Washington is, as always, powerfully charismatic, and it's nice for a change to see him play a character who isn't a candidate for sainthood. Unfortunately, he's reduced to chewing scenery by the time the movie is over, because that's all there is left for him to do. The subtle, fascinating moral shadings implied by the story end up buried under
shouting and gunfire.
Jake is the more ambiguous of the two main characters, and Hawke shows the potential for dark deeds beneath his slacker blankness. He is something of a stand-in for the audience, as he wrestles with the dilemma of an outsider trying to understand — and survive — a situation where his life clearly has no value, and neither does anyone else's. Right up to the end of the film, it's difficult to tell how he's going to respond, and you can practically see the wheels turning in Hawke's head as his character comes to terms with what he may or may not have to do.
Washington and Hawke make a surprisingly good
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"Training Day" have been all but abandoned, and the strength of its stars is the only thing holding it together.
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team, which is a blessing in the film's last half hour or so, when their characters' conflict descends into action-movie theatrics. By that point, the dramatic possibilities of
- The Mag can be reached at 832-7178.
10
) THURSDAY, OCTOBER 4, 2001
THE MAG/LAWRENCES JOURNAL-WORLD