Pubdate: Thu, 11 Oct 2001
Source: Colorado Springs Independent Newsweekly (CO)
Copyright: 2001 Colorado Springs Independent
Contact:  http://www.csindy.com/csindy/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1536
Author: Cole Smithey

WAR ZONE DIARY

Training Day (R) Warner Brothers

Training Day is a brilliantly written and directed urban blood bath set in 
Los Angeles's mean streets of drug dealers, gangbangers and undercover 
detectives. Denzel Washington is brutally cruel as Alonzo Harris, a corrupt 
narcotics detective taking advantage of rookie officer Jake Hoyt (Ethan 
Hawke) on his first day of training for an elite detective squad. As 
Washington's character sinks deeper into completing his own cash-fueled 
agenda, Hawke's character is forced to fight a very different battle 
against crime than he anticipated at the start of the day. Director Antoine 
Fuqua (The Replacement Killers) builds the film's ever-increasing tension 
to a series of gut-wrenching crescendos that put the movie on a par with 
Abel Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant.

Alonzo Harris isn't merely bitter about the swamp of crime he's dedicated 
his life to; he's chosen to lord over the L.A. underworld he resides in as 
a kind of urban cop king. He and Jake ride around L.A. in Alonzo's 
ghetto-fabulous office, a black '78 Monte Carlo complete with low-rider 
approved hydraulics. With dark-tinted glass, the car is a camouflaged 
implement of war and a badge of jurisdiction right out of Alonzo's warped 
ghetto-fed imagination. The day starts out early, with Jake kissing his 
wife and young baby goodbye before dawn, but it passes with events that 
expose tragic ethical faults in both Alonzo's and Jake's characters.

Denzel Washington is so utterly comfortable inside the gray area of crime 
mentality that he tricks the audience into viewing him as a protagonist. 
The close duality between Alonzo and Jake is written into the script but 
Washington over-achieves his performance in much the same way that Harvey 
Keitel did in Bad Lieutenant. Washington immerses himself in the role 
beyond self-judgement and in so doing puts himself out further than he has 
in more limiting roles. With so far to plunge, Washington makes Alonzo's 
descent into corruption and evil a virtuoso's study in defeat. Ethan Hawke 
also gets high marks for giving a muscular yet subtle portrayal of an 
ambitious rookie forced to learn 10 years of information in one day.

Training Day raises uneasy questions about the tendrils of corruption that 
reach deep into America's corridors of power. Inspired by the 1998 
"Rampart" police division scandal, David Ayer has embraced a slice of 
American law and justice that is as endemic as the crime it seeks to 
annihilate.

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