Fine acting, but a disappointing movie overall.

Rating: Null/10 (11 June 2007)

I was anxious to see "Training Day" because Denzel Washington won the Oscar for his performance. It indeed was an Oscar-caliber performance, but that alone doesn't make it a great film. In fact, to me it is seriously flawed.
As Denzel said in an interview this week, when he found out his character met such a finality, he took license to make him a really bad guy. With perhaps noble intentions, this cop deals out his own form of justice to the drug traffickers, in one scene shooting Scott Glenn's character with a shotgun in his apartment, then telling the other officers present how they should relate the incident to authorities. Denzel was also a cheating husband, with a primary family of wife and 4 sons, and a young son on the side with a Hispanic woman in the "hood."
Ethan Hawke plays an honest, by-the-book type of guy who is also street smart and capable of handling himself, a good cop. He eventually gets the upper hand on Denzel, after being abandoned for dead among Latino gambler thugs, and prevents him from getting the stolen money to the payoff point.
The following comments contain information which may be considered SPOILERS for those who have not yet seen Training Day.
The story covers one day, from early morning to midnight, it is Ethan Hawke's first day "training" with corrupt cop Denzel to become a narcotics officer. It ends when Denzel, unable to get the $Millions to the Russians by midnight, is gunned down at a stoplight by a half-dozen or so Russians. But I get ahead of myself.
Although difficult to watch at many points, most of the first 3/4 of the film has a realistic, ingenuous feel to it. Then the last parts become disingenuous. After a brutal fight, Hawke drops from the roof onto the hood of Denzel's car? Denzel, instead of getting out and disposing of him does a multiple car-ram routine in the parking lot? Denzel flaunts disobedience of all the rules, even pointing a gun at another driver in mid-day, but at midnight, on a deserted street stops and waits for a light to change to green?? That was obviously done only to stage the finality where the Russians box him in and then start shooting. A rather promising story, once again, ruined by a poor and unimaginative end game. Staged fights, near-executions, saved-by-a-phone-call scene, car crashes, slow-motion execution do not a good movie make.
I saw it on DVD. While the picture and sound are fine, and there are a couple of interesting extras, overall the presentation by modern standards is average at best. Overall a disappointment, with much foul language and crude sexual references, and I will not recommend "Training Day" to friends.