Very Good In Places , Rather Poor In Other Places

Rating: 7/10 (22 July 2003)

Jake Hoyt teams up with Alonzo Harris . Hoyt is a newbie plains clothes undercover cop while Harris has been in the job for years and both men are chalk and cheese where personality is concerned . We`ve seen this sort of scenario umpteen times in other buddy movies , only thing is this usually only happens in comedy dramas and if you`re tuning into TRAINING DAY for some light hearted laughs you`re going to be very disappointed

!!!!! MILD SPOILERS !!!!!
TRAINING DAY is a grim gritty hard hitting drama , the sort of movie Hollywood rarely makes these days with the first half being a very compelling intelligent movie that really holds your attention . Unfortunately about half way through there`s a slightly ridiculous plot twist that threatens to sink the whole movie and had me begging the question " Why on earth would Harris and his corrupt buddies invite Hoyt along to do a job with them " ? I mean Harris has only known his partner for a few hours at the most while the other cops don`t know him at all so why would they trust Hoyt to keep his mouth shut ? I guess that`s to show how evil Harris is and how morally upstanding Hoyt is at the climax , another bit I found faintly ridiculous . I mean if you`re a home boy would you side with a corrupt black cop who`d let you walk away from a crime if the price was right or would you side with an untouchable white cop who will see justice done at any price ? Yeah that`s what I thought too .
I don`t want anyone picking me up wrong thinking I hate this film because I don`t , it`s very well acted by all the cast and even after the plot twist halfway through it still held my attention , especially when Hoyt is in the latinos` house . It`s just that it seemed the studio decided to treat the audience as fools at the last moment which is a common fault with Hollywood movies for the last few years . I was going to give TRAINING DAY 9 out of ten up untill the halfway point , so overall the movie gets 7 out of 10

Seeing as everyone else has brought up the subject of who deserved the oscar I will say some days I think Washington deserved it while some days I think Crowe deserved it , but 2001 wasn`t a vintage year for performances and if the Oscar voters had put Jim Broadbent in the best actor category he would have deserved to have won it for IRIS