Review: Training Day (2001)

 Training Day (2001)

Rated R for strong brutal violence, pervasive language, drug content and brief nudity

Score: 5 out of 5

Training Day is a nasty and vicious little movie that feels as fresh today as it must have in 2001, such is both its craftsmanship and the unfortunately continued timeliness of its themes. There have been many crime dramas and thrillers about crooked police officers, many of them in the last twenty years cribbing on this film's aesthetic, but Training Day takes that basic plot and spins it into a broader indictment of police brutality (the Rampart scandal burst open during production) that it directly connects to police corruption, as represented by Denzel Washington in a great villain performance -- all while keeping the focus squarely on telling a gripping story in which the heavier themes lurk mainly as subtext. Its atmosphere plunges the viewer deep into the heart of South Central Los Angeles, and yet the criminals are not the most dangerous thing around, as both the protagonists and the viewer get sucked into the irresistible maelstrom of its villain on a day when it feels as though everything that can go wrong is going to. This is, without a doubt, one of the best police movies of the 21st century, and there's a reason why Washington, director Antoine Fuqua, and writer David Ayer have been using it to punch their meal tickets in Hollywood for twenty years now.

Our protagonist Jake Hoyt is a rookie officer in the Los Angeles Police Department with nineteen months on the force who is ready to make detective. First, however, he must submit to an evaluation by Alonzo Harris, a flashy narcotics officer in a leather jacket who drives a '70s Chevrolet Monte Carlo lowrider. The moment we are introduced to Alonzo, alarm bells should immediately start ringing as he quickly demonstrates that he is that kind of cop, the kind who gives law enforcement in general a bad name. He's casually sexist, he takes pleasure in roughing up suspects and stealing their money, he forces Jake to smoke marijuana laced with PCP in order to demonstrate that he "has what it takes", he enters a home with a fake warrant in order to rob it, he chides Jake for not simply shooting a suspect, and through it all, he's convinced that he's doing the right thing, that his brutal tactics are necessary to bring Los Angeles' notorious gangsters to heel. The scariest thing about him is that, in brief moments, you can almost see his point. Alonzo's worldview is an apocalyptic one of a society that is barely holding together thanks primarily to the efforts of people like him, in which the honest, by-the-book, less violent tactics that Jake favors will accomplish nothing and simply allow criminals to go free and continue their reign of terror. The words "thin blue line" are never stated, but they are heavily implied, and it's shown that Alonzo has a lot of friends and supporters among his fellow officers. The events of the film don't actually seem to justify Alonzo's beliefs, shown as they are to merely fuel the resentment that poor and working-class communities have towards law enforcement and cause more violence, but Washington's dark charisma is such that you get the sense that, in his mind, he's more than just a corrupt dick. He actually seems to believe what he's telling Jake about how the world works, and how this justifies breaking the law in the name of enforcing it. And once you're in for a penny on that front, you may as well go in for a pound, right? This is the movie that turned Washington the actor into "Denzel Washington" the character and pop culture figure, a smart, salty man's man with blue-collar sensibilities who does what he thinks is right, and this film takes that figure, strips out the more dignified qualities, and turns him into a terrifying villain. There's a reason this was the movie that won him the Oscar.

The rest of the cast also turns in solid work, led by Ethan Hawke as Jake, Alonzo's partner for the day. Jake feels himself being corrupted by Alonzo's influence and recoils in horror and disgust at some of the things he does and tries to have him do, but knows full well that Alonzo is in charge and holds his career, his freedom, and his life in his hands. He's straining to reconcile his ambition with the awfulness that Alonzo gets him caught up in, ultimately winding up getting burned on both ends; by the end, it's questionable if he came out in one piece. The supporting cast is filled with a who's who of character actors, particularly Scott Glenn as the ex-cop turned drug dealer Roger who suggests a possible path that Alonzo might head down, lending gravitas to the wall of corruption within the LAPD that makes it seem that much more imposing for Jake. The streets, too, boasted authenticity, Antoine Fuqua having shot the film on location in some of Los Angeles' most notorious ghettoes to the point where actual gang members were hired as extras, decisions that paid off in capturing the grime of the streets and briefly making Alonzo's rants almost sound reasonable. The soundtrack, filled with contemporary hip-hop acts that don't fall into the obvious "nothing but hits" cliche (even though, by 2001, they'd have had their pick of '90s LA gangsta rappers), was also a treat for someone like me who was a kid back then and has long since grown admittedly a bit nostalgic for that era of rap music. This is a film that pulls you right in with its characters through its gripping atmosphere, a look at a modern urban ghetto that has often been imitated but never duplicated, a world where you can easily imagine an evil figure like Alonzo running wild.

The Bottom Line

A nail-biting thriller that mixes social commentary, a chilling and even creepy atmosphere, and one of the greatest villains in the history of crime movies, Training Day is an excellent film that easily stands the test of time. If you haven't seen it, you're missing out.