Training Day

Rating:
Summary: Denzel - Not at his best
Review: As a black man and a lover of blacks in film, I thought Training day was one of Denzel's worst roles and his worst performance on film. While watching the movie I always got the impression that he was reading a script on how to be tuff and ruthless, but failed miserably at both. It's one of those things that hard to explain. Your facial expression, your body language has to sync with your speech when doing a play or performing on film. It's akin to capturing the essence of the rage of an Inner City youth in all its nuance. It would be difficult for an actor into Shakespearean play to try and pull off the street verbage of an Inner City youth- capturing the fire and the rage and still make it "look real". By the same token, the reverse would be true if you ask the Inner City youth to do Shakespeare, while not being impossible, it would be difficult. Denzel Washington receiving an Academy Award for this film and not receiving one for the film "The Mighty Quinn", is to stand justice on its head. He was superb in that film - he lived the role. The people in charge of award selections don't know what to look for in an actor who is to portray a tuff guy - they have their cliques and attend their champagne Holloywood parties, but the don't know "Street" the way I do -If you get my drift. Training Day will not be a part of my DVD library, but I have many other fine Denzel Washington films to fall back on.

PS: Hollywood, if you're thinking about doing a movie similar to Training Day, who would you cast as the tuff cop, Blair Underwood or Malik Yoba? If you choose Blair over Malik you would have blown it again. Blair Underwood is a fine actor and one of my favorites, but Malik would be the better choice - Get it!!!!!

Rating:
Summary: Great the first, second, third, fourth, and hundreth time...
Review: Possibly one of the best movies I have ever seen, with AMAZING performances by Paul Walker and Denzel. Once you see Walker in this movie, you'll be saying "the fast and the what?". While I previously LOATHED Denzel for his constantly corny performances, he does a 180 in this movie, playing the part of a street-wise, corrupt psycho cop. A must see for anyone who doesn't mind a few 4 letter words and a little bit of T&A. Definitely not for the kids

Rating:
Summary: Not the typical Denzel Washington movie
Review: Mr. Wasington's performance was different and believable. His character is "raw" in every sense of the word. It's a shame that he would have to play a "dirty cop" win to an Oscar over all the other work he has done. If you are into mayhem, this is the movie for you.

Rating:
Summary: Denzel Washington dances with his dark side for an Oscar
Review: I have no problem with Denzel Washington receiving the Oscar for "Training Day," because the history of the Academy Awards is filled with winners who were probably being honored for a body of work rather (e.g., John Wayne, Henry Fonda) or making up for an earlier snub (e.g., Jimmy Stewart, Al Pacino) than a career best performance (e.g., Yul Brynner, F. Murray Abraham). All of this is certainly debatable but Washington's performance as Detective Alonzo Harris, the philosophical narcotics detective who is teaching the rules of the street to wannabe detective Jake Hoyt (Ethan Hawke) is certainly a solid characterization. How memorable you consider it probably has to do with you are a fan of Washington or the genre; for the former, this is a radical departure for the actor that standard in marked contrast to everything he has done to date, but for the latter the most significant different would be that this time the younger cop is being taught by an older cop who happens to be black.

The strength of the film is not so much Washington's performance as it is the way both the character of Jake and the audience are put in the perspective of wondering how much of Alonzo's "training" is legit, and how much is some sort of put-on, ruse, or test for the rookie. Early on it becomes clear that Jake has no clue as to what is really going on, and neither do we. Jake is a bit too naïve at the start, especially if he thinks a drug dealer is going to let him refuse an offer to toke up, but no matter how much he knows he would clearly be in over his head before long as Alonzo laws down his personal blend of street justice and economic opportunity. Screenwriter David Ayer is definitely comfortable in this genre, having deal with undercover cops in both his previous film, "The Fast and the Furious," and the upcoming "Dark Blue," but there is one thing that I think constitutes a glaring error in the film, which really got in the way of my enjoying the final act.

I think that anybody who has watched a moderate amount of cop shows on television or seen their fair share of movies about cops during their jobs, knows what happens to a cop who shoots somebody. Well, that does not happen in this film. In fact, one of Alonzo's boasts is that he and his men are protected by their captain from such legal inconveniences. Of course, if they follow standard procedure then the rest of the film does not happen, so Ayer take what I consider a rather large liberty with the real world because with the multi-million dollar lawsuits waiting around every corner I cannot believe there is a major police force in the country that does not cover its rear ends completely on officer involved shootings, no matter who the victim happens to be.

Of course, this might just be me, and you can certainly see this plot element as a speed bump rather than a major roadblock. When we get to the climax of "Training Day" the big question is what is going to happen and who is going to be left standing. In a film like this, given the strong acting performances by both of the main characters, I cannot imagine what more your little heart could desire.

Rating:
Summary: Mediocre....
Review: C'mon people if denzel deserved an oscar for this performance then he should have many more because this performance wasn't even his 10th best. There is no sublety to the acting. Just a lot of yelling, screaming, spitting and mugging. I was shocked that so many seem so impressed.

Training day is about a once good cop gone bad, real bad. Ethan hawk plays the unsuspecting rookie who is about to have a life changing experience. He finds his tutor to be violent, corrupt to the core and even deadly. Plant some evidence to make a case? No problem. Skim a little drug money off the top? No problem there either but the real turning point in the movie is when the denzel character executes a drug dealer. He's just scum anyway was the rationalization. Keep in mind this is all happening on a rookie's first day as a narc! No attempt to work him in gradually into this corrupt world. Eventually(of course) the young cop rebels against these injustices and almost loses his life becuase of what he knows. Then he turns on his teacher

The plot of the film seems too politically motivated and forced. You have this psychopathic bad guy black cop and the well meaning young white cop with unrealistic ideals. Watching this film you may be lead to believe that entire police forces are corrupt and all the men sitting in prison are just victims of corruption. Yeah right.

When the hawk's character turns on his teacher and tries to bring him to justice the movie has a chance to shine. It doesn't. You have the typical struggle and an ending that is dumber than you can believe. Here is hawk's character holding a gun on denzel in the street. A large crowd of neighborhood people are around the scence now and almost all of them are black. They reject denzel's pleas to help one of their own because of what he has done to their community. He screams that he will "make a case" against all of them and there is that infamous line "I'm the police, you just live here." The end comes when hawk's character returns home dejected that all he dreamed of and all his ideals are lost. The crooked denzel cop meets his end when an assasination squad with automatic weapons come upon him and fire at his car. In an idiotic scene right out of the godfather denzel, just like sonny corelone emerges from his vehicle and dies only after another barrage of bullets riddle his body. Aside from the unrealistic possibility that a guy with 150 bullets in him could get out of a car and stand, that death scence represents the most horrible acting i have ever seen out of denzel washington with his mouth slung open and his final stagger he looks more drunk than dying. Horrible.

Actually it is ethan hawk who has the challenging role and he pulls it off fairly well. He has to begin the film as an idealistic nervous cop who gradually becomes disappionted, disgusted, outraged and then enraged. In the end his whole life is shattered his career, all his dreams. A point that isn't even given 2 minutes time. It takes a more mercurial performance to play that part.

Over all training day is a mediocre film with decent acting, decent action and a flawed plot. The end was a huge disappointment.

..............socks

Rating:
Summary: Even a blurred line can be crossed
Review: I've probably seen a thousand movies about cops, and I'll probably see a thousand more. To my memory, some of the best portrayals of cops on the silver screen come from films such as "Serpico," "The French Connection," "The Prince of the City," and "L.A. Confidential," or even minor films such as "Q & A" and "Year of the Dragon." My "favorite" movie cops, so to speak, tend to be the ones on the edge of the law, or the force, or both.

There was a fair amount of pre-release print devoted to this film, so of course I had very high expectations of Denzel Washington's character, who's an L.A. street detective always "on the dark side of the force." The parallels between Washington's Alonzo Harris and the real-life Rafael Perez (the LAPD detective notorious for his role in the Rampart scandal) are obvious. But what's most interesting about this comparison is the fact that David Ayer's searing screenplay was essentially completed long before Rampart became a synonym for police corruption. This is not just a story imitating history, but reflecting it directly. Ayer drops you headlong into the gutter to smell, breathe, and taste the world that "Training Day" brings, the blurred line between good and evil. Along with Antoine Fuqua's stylish direction and Mark Mancina's ominous score, this film doesn't just show you the streets ... it is the streets.

The story introduces Alonzo in the most effective way possible ... by using Ethan Hawke's character Jake Hoyt as his "straight man" (and our moral center), so that as we are bombarded by Alonzo's extremely unconventional methods, Jake's reactions are also ours. In scene after scene, Alonzo's lesson is that in order to get crime off the streets, you first have to get close enough to it to make you a little dirty. Not surprisingly, Washington dominates the screen in every single scene, with language and behavior unlike most of the movie cops portrayed before him. Washington invests the character with one part depth, one part smarts, and two parts swagger, with a street-level expertise that is alternately impressive and repulsive.

I was somewhat let down by the final 20 minutes, because Alonzo is suddenly made into an irredeemable villain, which cheapens the character, and we are supposed to accept what becomes of him at face value. Such a giftwrapped ending is in keeping more with Hollywood's peculiar white hat/black hat moral tradition rather than the harsh realities preached by Alonzo throughout the film. It looks like an ending decided in the production office rather than on the keyboard. A more ambiguous ending would have been more explosive in its own way, and I suppose that's why the break is so clean.

Denzel Washington's second Oscar is well deserved. Alonzo Harris is one of the most unforgettable movie cops I've ever seen. The moral here, if there is one, is that even a blurred line can be crossed.

Rating:
Summary: To protect and serve
Review: The first day on a new job is never easy, but how many fledgling hires are expected to smoke PCP-laced marijuana at gunpoint shortly after breakfast or have cocktails with a high-level drug dealer before lunch? Such is training day for LAPD rookie Jack Hoyt (Ethan Hawke), the closest thing to a hero in Antoine Fuqua's dark and extremely violent police thriller.

Hoyt desperately wants to make detective and figures a quick way to the top is through the aggressive narcotics unit headed by Detective Sergeant Alonzo Harris (Denzel Washington). Clad in head-to-toe black, with heavy gold chains and a tattoo that reads "Death is certain. Life is not," Harris is a seasoned veteran of South Central L.A.'s mean streets, where he's learned not only how to stay alive, but how to turn a profit as well.

Harris sets about upping Hoyt's street I.Q. by forcing him to smoke the doctored weed they pilfer from a bust ("A good narcotics agent must know and love narcotics") and paying a visit to Roger (Scott Glenn), a dealer who seems more like Harris's drinking buddy than a serious felon ("It takes a wolf to catch a wolf"). But Harris has something a little more pressing on his mind: He recently spent a very expensive weekend in Vegas during which he sank himself deep into debt with the Russian mob, who'd now like to have a word with him.

As the day progresses, Hoyt's bright-eyed eagerness turns first to dismay, then terror, as his big career break turns into his biggest nightmare. This is an uncharacteristically brutal performance from Washington, who, after a string of upright but less interesting roles, is quite consciously playing against type and appears to be relishing every moment. He's never seemed so menacing, nor has the City of Angels: Fuqua presents his hometown as a simmering cauldron of crime, though seeing such larger-than-life pop stars as Macy Gray and Snoop Dogg in bit parts undercuts the otherwise carefully constructed realism.

The film is at its best when it explores the moral ambiguities of Harris's approach to law enforcement - when the usual rules no longer apply, at what point do the ends cease to justify the means? - and plays into real-life concerns about elite, trigger-happy street crime units who seem to operate above the law. Even after it becomes clearer which side of the law Harris is operating on, the film continues to work as a taut - if violent - police thriller.

Rating:
Summary: Ethan got robbed.
Review: I'm still not clear on why Ethan Hawke was nominated for best supporting actor for this film, since he's the star, or co-star at the least. And his performance was much more nuanced and convincing than Denzel sleep-walking through another tough-guy role. Of course the twist on this one was that he's the bad guy. But we've seen it all before, and better, in some of his other films (of course, The Bone Collector was a huge piece of garbage, too...).

So I give Ethan five stars and Denzel two. And you gotta subtract some brownie points for the everybody-gets-what's-coming-to-them finale that is completely disjointed from the cynical tone the rest of the movie carries. Hollywood is out of ideas.

Rating:
Summary: Gotta Love Denzel but...
Review: I have been a huge Denzel Washington fan for a long, long time. His nearly flawless portrayals always hit the mark, and this is no exception. If you're looking for gritty, down and dirty urban cliches this is your film, but it left me wanting. Maybe I wanted to see some kind of redemption, some bit of humanist in Washington's character. There is none -- but of course that's the point. I supposed the problem boils down to this: Denzel is too good in his portrayal of a corrupt, cynical, and debased police officer. It was a disturbing bit of "realism" and it took a while to get it out of my head. Denzel's portrayl, so against type for him, is impeccable, but it is just too disturbing to provide any real form of "entertainment."

Rating:
Summary: Mindless
Review: This is perhaps one of the worst and most mindless movies i've ever seen. Their is no semblence of plot and the movie has a feel of aimlessness. It doesn't feel like its going anywhere. Its filled with tons of meaningless violence and macho garbage that are the staple of movies aimed at younger males but it lacks a compelling story to go along with it. The ending where the rookie cop leaves the crooked cop to die and somehow he is let free (though we don't see how) before being shot by russians that are mentioned twice in the movie but not brought into the plot is terrible. On the plus Denzel shows his acting talent, but even he cannot save a film that lacks both plot and meaning.