Big cop out

Rating: 5/10 (20 October 2001)

SPOILERS
"Training Day" opens strong. Here you had Jake, a guy who finds himself in this terrible situation. He wants to make detective and work narcotics, so he must spend a day in the field getting some real world' training with a hardened LAPD legend. You see this big brother/little brother dynamic develop between the two. Jake wants to impress this guy more than anything, but soon realizes he's in for more than he ever imagined.
Who was it that said, the audience doesn't want to see the second worst day of a guy's life? Well, what a day this ends up being for Jake Hoyt. Ethan Hawke gives this great multi-leveled performance. There's two main things he needs to accomplish: be scared of Alonzo and hide that fear from Alonzo. It's just one day,' he must be thinking to himself, I can get through this.'
The film does not build on this promise, but ends up being an unintentional sermon. I never like to feel like I'm being preached to while watching a film. "Training Day" claims to know the answers to the questions it poses. Films shouldn't do that. Make the audience think but let them make up their own minds.
The cause of this problem is the character of Alonzo Harris. I was disappointed that this guy ended up really being bad. This is a case of a plot twist gone wrong. While it's admirable that Denzel didn't demand that the writers change the story so his character seems more heroic, the way many stars have, I almost wished they'd gone that route, if only just a little.
We're never given a reason to feel sympathetic toward Alonzo. First we think he's a jerk. Then we find out he's really an evil person. The plot features this double fake-out that starts with him going psycho on a couple of would-be rapists. At this point you're thinking, they're messing with our heads. Soon we're going to see that Alonzo isn't such a bad guy. But the story just keeps pouring it on: Evil, evil, evil. This translated into boring, boring, boring.
By the time the film got to the business with the three wise men and Alonzo's 'posse,' followed by the revelation that Jake's been set up the entire time, I was no longer involved. I was no longer relating to Jake's character but was just along for the ride, merely curious about what happened next.
The card game scene is great and could have saved this film's behind. It's ruined by a coincidence that asks more from the audience's suspension of disbelief than it should. I mean, his cousin? Out of how many millions of people in Los Angeles? Is that supposed to be ironic? It's not even the coincidence that bugs me the most; it's that the scene it's meant to be the payoff of, the scene that had been the most interesting and intense in the film, ends with a big thud.
"Training Day" is another one of those films I wish had taken a different course. At the beginning you're thinking it's going to be about this wide-eyed rookie learning the hard lessons of the 'real' world. But not long into the story it becomes apparent that the film isn't based on any reality at all. It becomes this typical cop thriller with corrupt cops and evil Russian mafia guys. Isn't there enough moral tests in the real struggles of an undercover narcotics officer that they could have built a story around? It's as if no one involved in the film knew anything about narcotics investigation, so they had to resort to this theoretical crap that's straight out of "Tango and Cash."
Grade: C