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Critics 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.
Critic 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.
All Critics (158) | Top Critics (36) | Fresh (114) | Rotten (44) | DVD (16)
If he makes it through the trial by fire -- and a blandly twisting plot with no meaningful revelations or substantial themes -- Hawke will get a promotion, but there's nothing in it for us.
Director Fuqua keeps it slick and sleazy and stokes up the race some, but this only accelerates the movie's deafening rush toward the top and ever over.
On a purely visceral level, Training Day is easily the most exciting movie out there right now, but as a morality tale with anything large on its mind, it's a cop-out.
Training Day isn't just one of the finest cops-and-robbers thrillers of recent years, full of devious twists and gut-grinding tension, but it also steers clear of convenient moral formulas.
Training Day is a tense, polished, well-made action thriller that suffers from bad timing.
As usual Washington is astounding. He grabs the screen like a vise and never lets go.
Training Day is not a completely unnuanced parable on policing and a nice disavowal of the movie-perpetuated cliché of smug, streetwise copdom.
An extraordinary [Denzel] Washington dominates the film.
'Training Day' is still a very interesting thriller where Denzel Washington truly shines just as the lucid but equally necessary and inspired work of Ethan Hawke. [Full review in Spanish]
Great performances, but for adults only.
A surprisingly excellent movie with Incredible performances...
The movie moves rapidly, is extremely violent and not entirely plausible.
American cinema at his best. One of the best and clever films ever made.
Super Reviewer
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This cop thriller spans over not much more than 12 hours of tough, gritty and morally grey work in the ugly parts of LA. Between drug addicts, dealers and gang members the rookie gets his lessons by the leader of the pack. Washington and Hawke are perfect choices for their roles and especially Denzel's performance is magnificent, keeping his character somewhere between insanity and reason, menacing and jovial at the same time, deserving the Oscar he got for it. As an outsider, it is hard to say how realistic the film, as it isn't exactly painting a very flattering picture of the LAPD. But it is the lack of any morally comforting formulas that makes the plot so enthralling. Does the rookie get an important lesson or is he in the car with the devil? This question, carried by the strong performances and a great cinematography make this film work. As things get more and more dire, the audience can't help but get engaged. Excellent.
Ethan Hawke plays a rookie cop looking to make detective by becoming part of Denzel Washington's narcotics task force. But is he teaching the rules of survival on the dog eat dog streets, or is he a psychotic and corrupt loose cannon using Hawke's inexperience for his own ends? The biggest appeal in this glossy cop thriller is seeing Denzel playing totally against his usual holier than holy type and if he'd taken more of these parts, I'd like him a whole lot more. Unfortunately it's the reliance on surface gloss that is the film's Achilles heel. If you asked a middle class 15 year old white boy what it's like to live in the "hood", this is exactly what he'd describe; basically a living hip-hop video, complete with rappers, lowriders and hot and gratuitously naked Puerto Rican babes. The story and direction is effective but it chugs along with little pause for suspense and it lacks the grittiness and believability of the similar Narc. It is clearly a quality action thriller that's fuelled by Washington's powerhouse performance but the female demographic may be put off by the constant macho posturing that makes it positively reek of testosterone.
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