A solid crime movie with a great villain

Rating: 8/10 (7 April 2019)

Training Day is a 2001 cop drama/thriller starring Denzel Washington as veteran Narcotics cop Denzel Washington and Ethan Hawke as Jake Hoyt, an LAPD newbie auditioning himself to Alonzo for a job on the Narc Squad.
The film's most immediately obvious strength lies in the personal, documentary-esque way we follow the two officers throughout their day. We start with a mundane breakfast scene in a roadside cafe to introduce us to the characters and their eccentricities, transition to Alonzo's car and from there we ride along with the characters on the whole seedy and sordid affair.
Hoyt acts almost as an audience surrogate, reacting to Alonzo's antics with confusion, admiration and alarm. Ethan Hawke does a great job of conveying a rookie cop's naivety yet combines this with strong morals and sense of honour and duty that makes his character likable.
Washington steals the show, however, with his portrayal of Harris. Alonzo is a character who mutates constantly throughout the movie. Washington flicks effortlessly between being charming, cold, amusing, intimidating, sinister and friendly. Harris is just as at home smiling warmly at you as he is blowing you away with a shotgun - and when he decides to pull that trigger, he's already worked out exactly how it's all going to play out in court afterwards.
I'd say keeping Alonzo's nature ambiguous until the very end of the movie is another strength of the tight script. Just like Hoyt, we are never 100% sure whether Alonzo is merely a maverick or a flat out corrupt scumbag right until he crosses a very specific moral line (the murder of Roger for money). Even then, Washington's acting is so good Alonzo almost makes the killing seem reasonable!
The movie has a brain to it, and features several things that really stand out on repeat viewing. In particular, the scene in which Harris is smiling and laughing on his phone and says "Make sure you clean the tub out after...". He then shares a seemingly heartfelt conversation with Jake, making that line particularly chilling once you have seen the movie once and understand what the phone call was referring to...!
Weaknesses of the film precluding it from a 9 or 10 star rating from me include a somewhat limp ending and some extraordinary coincidences.
At one point Jake's life is saved because it turns out that a girl he prevented a sexual assault on earlier in the day is the niece of a gangster about to kill him. This seems like a big long shot. Since the guy is the head of a large gang, it would have perhaps made more sense to make the girl the sister of one of his gang members or something. Those odds would at least seem a little less ridiculous.
As for the ending; after a brilliant performance, Washington's character is gunned down with almost no fanfare by a bunch of oft-mentioned-but-never-seen Russian gangsters. It's not a terrible idea and is fairly satisfying, but I think it would have been better to simply have Harris murdered outside his girlfriend's house by the gangs during the standoff with Hoyt. It would have really highlighted how he was no different (even worse in fact) than the criminals he was manipulating. It would have also added an interesting angle regarding whether Jake would have kept quiet on the murder or not, showing that maybe in a way he "learned" to bend the rules from Alonzo.
Anyway, despite these minor flaws the film as a whole is well acted, well written and enjoyable to watch or re-watch. 8/10.