gritty stuff but oscar caliber?

Rating: Null/10 (31 January 2003)

Actors seem to enjoy playing "bad" people and Denzel is so bad here, he becomes a caricature: a slick mix of all those power hungry LA cops you hear about too much in the news. His performance is riveting, he's a scumbag yes, but who would want to watch this more than once? Ethan Hawke's role was the tougher of the 2 leads, I felt, because he had to play a person who is all too rare in Hollywood these days: someone with a strong moral center. We feel all his pain and disgust and finally his anger, and we root for him, even with the cliched script. Hawke deserved his supporting nomination since he truly went thru an emotional gamut from beginning to end. Denzel pretty much stayed the same: remaining a scurvy villain in every scene, even if, one is apt to say, his job created his behavior as much as his own greed did. Feeling powerless to change society, he in turn becomes just as warped and destroyed as the people he's trying to put away. Too bad the screenplay takes the issue of powerlessness and turns it into an action picture. This could have been real compelling with a more careful writer. Instead we get Denzel as evil cartoon and an Oscar to show much Hollywood loves evil cartoons. Harvey Kietel excelled with more complexity in the Bad Lieutenant some years before in the 90's, with complicated religious overtones thrown into the mix to make a riveting but overlooked film experience that was hardly given a chance at the box office. See that for a more realistic look at corruption and authority and view Training Day one time to debate why Denzel has the gold statue and Kietel does not.