Dares to be a cop movie based on character and not on pyrotechnics.
Training Day (2001)
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Reviews Counted:152
Fresh:109
Rotten:43
Average Rating:6.5/10
Consensus: The ending may be less than satisfying, but Denzel Washington reminds us why he's such a great actor in this taut and brutal police drama.
Rated: R [See Full Rating] for brutal violence, pervasive language, drug content and brief nudity
Runtime: 2 hrs 2 mins
Genre: Action/Adventure
Theatrical Release:Oct 5, 2001 Wide
Box Office: $76,074,739
Synopsis: Every day, there is a war being waged on America’s inner city streets – a war between residents, drug dealers and the people sworn to protect one from the other. This war has its casualties, none... Every day, there is a war being waged on America’s inner city streets – a war between residents, drug dealers and the people sworn to protect one from the other. This war has its casualties, none greater than L.A.P.D. Detective Sergeant Alonzo Harris (DENZEL WASHINGTON), a 13-year veteran narcotics officer whose questionable methodology blurs the line between legality and corruption. His optimism has long since been chipped away by his tour of duty in the streets, where fighting crime by the book can get you killed, and getting the job done often requires Alonzo and his colleagues to break the laws they are empowered to enforce. A gritty, realistic drama set in the morally ambiguous world of undercover police investigation, Training Day shadows Alonzo as he tests the resolve of idealistic rookie Jake Hoyt (ETHAN HAWKE), who has one day and one day only to prove himself to his fiercely charismatic superior. Over the next 24 hours, Jake will be pulled deeper and deeper into the ethical mire of Alonzo’s logic as both men put their lives and careers on the line to serve their conflicting notions of justice. Training Day is a blistering action drama that asks the audience to decide what is necessary, what is heroic and what crosses the line in the harrowing gray zone of fighting urban crime. Does law-abiding law enforcement come at the expense of justice and public safety? If so, do we demand safe streets at any cost? Or do we risk our security by insisting that those empowered to protect us do so within the boundaries of the law? At a time when police across the nation are battling a public image of rampant corruption, narcotics use, planting evidence and excess brutality while patrolling the meanest streets of America, Training Day paints a gripping and realistic portrait of the war taking place on the urban front lines – and just how high the costs of this battle can be. -- © Warner Bros. [More]
Starring: Denzel Washington, Ethan Hawke, Scott Glenn, Tom Berenger
Starring: Denzel Washington, Ethan Hawke, Scott Glenn, Tom Berenger, Snoop Doggy Dogg, Eva Mendes, Dr. Dre, Raymond J. Barry, Will Foster Stewart, Harris Yulin, Macy Gray
Director: Antoine Fuqua
Director: Antoine Fuqua
Screenwriter: David Ayer
Producer: Jeffrey Silver, Robert Newmyer
Composer: Mark Mancina
Studio: Warner Bros.
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Reviews for Training Day
It's partly down to David Ayer’s smart, shades-of-gray script and partly down to the gusto with which Washington approaches this aggressively against-type role that Training Day achieves its brilliance.
Unquestionably convincing, disturbingly realistic, and unflinchingly honest.
Washington's performance is so good, in fact, that it may temporarily blind you from seeing that the movie has obscured its message.
As impersonated by the evangelically thunderous Washington -- who no longer acts with other performers, he acts at them -- Alonzo feels about as 'street' as a Beverly Hills ghetto.
Training Day has been made with style and confidence, but it doesn't know whose side it's on.
Giving Alonso a melodramatic secret -- a reason for this particular behavior on this particular day -- trivializes the whole exercise.
While Training Day is a violent film, its brutality takes place in a believable moral universe and isn't just tossed in to give us a thrill.
The film works a bit better as a vehicle for Washington, and it often gets by on his devilish charm. But it loses all its punch as he becomes more hissable.
This movie is so racist that it's almost possible to overlook the wholesale misogyny.
Washington plays Alonzo like a con man with a one-two punch ... It's tour-de-force acting.
A pinball machine of sustained tension, Washington textures his character brilliantly and surpasses Popeye Doyle's brazen effrontery.
It's ugly and disturbing, but what gets us through it and pulls us along is Washington's charisma, which he gleefully uses in a darkly seductive way here.
Having seen everything come together so beautifully, it almost physically hurts to watch Training Day collapse into a pile of cop-movie tropes during the last 15 minutes.
The movie is headed for a long, brutal and bloody payoff, one that may be too over-the-top for public consumption right about now.
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