Outstanding corrupt cop drama

Rating: 9/10 (4 July 2008)

The ending was a bit of overkill. That could be said. And the mano-a-mano fight après the ending was a bit drawn out. That too could be said. But the rest of the film was more than excellent.
"Training Day" is the best of the bad cop dramas that I have seen, and I've seen a few. Both Denzel Washington as the psychopathic bad cop, Alonzo, and Ethan Hawke as the idealistic rookie, Jake, were full out. Denzel Washington won the Best Actor Oscar for his performance, and Ethan Hawke was nominated for Best Supporting Actor. The direction by Antoine Fuqua was superb. The LA street scenes and milieu were as real and vivid as my old buddy Taco Bender. (And trust me, Taco Bender was very real.) The extras in the crowd scenes should get some kind of prize for macho scary. I've been there, and I still have a few nightmares. There are some streets in LA you don't want to walk down unless you are a homey, or a brother, and some other streets you don't want to walk down, period.
Unlike some cop dramas and shoot 'em up thrillers, this one was carefully planned, so that the scene in the barrio at the card table, the rook all alone set up for the kill, came across as real because what had happened before was just about the only thing in the world that could have saved him. The LA atmosphere was like a rush, as stunningly authentic in a different way as, say, that in Chinatown (1974) or LA Confidential (1997), but more contemporary.
I wonder how many guys starting in say the sixties or maybe a little before have experienced the kind of initiation that Jake experiences in terms of being fed some dope never before tasted and then "led" on the "trip" by someone wanting to exploit them. Most of the time, for most guys it was an initiation into something other worldly, scary, but something that was only psychological and would be gone the next day. For Jake it was a matter of, first, his livelihood as an idealistic cop, and second a matter of groking to a paranoid view of the world in which the good guys are the bad guys and everything is hopelessly corrupt and there is no good, only evil—and you just found out. And third, a matter of life and death with either acid and grass running all around your brain or maybe PCP and speed, and some suddenly obviously evil person (as Washington so well depicted) giving you the kind of "guidance" you can't refuse. And then finally it is beyond life and death and only a matter of primeval justice and a revenge you must perform.
Look for Snoop Dogg in a wheelchair and Dr. Dre as one of Alonzo's posse cops.
(Note: Over 500 of my movie reviews are now available in my book "Cut to the Chaise Lounge or I Can't Believe I Swallowed the Remote!" Get it at Amazon!)