Awful or Excellent?

Rating: 8/10 (3 February 2004)

I am not sure how to rate this movie, 1 of 10 awful, or 10 of 10 excellent.

If you like being frighten and appalled while watching a movie, and enjoy walking away feeling disgusted and dirty, wanting to burn your close and take a shower, and derive joy from having bad dreams at night, than THIS is the movie for you!

Training Day depicts the worse aspects of humanity, betrayal, treachery, greed, murder; and shows an unsuspecting trainee cop pitted against this onslaught while he searches to do the right thing; and photographs it all in a horrifying way. This is NOT a feel good movie. This is not a movie for the faint of heart, nor children, nor anyone under thirty who may well be scandalized. This movie is disgusting, vile and is a piece of trash.

On the other hand, Training Day is movie making at its Very Best! Denzel Washington is remarkably good with his performance of Detective Alonzo Harris; and Ethan Hawke, the trainee, seems to come out of no where to match Denzel's performance scene to scene with the excellence attributed only to the premium big name heavy weight actors in Hollywood today. And that's not easy to do! Denzel Washington is as good an actor as there ever was, and better then most. Hawke's performance is superlative.
Astonishing performances were also rendered by Tom Berenger, Harris Yulin, Raymond J. Barry, Cliff Curtis, Macy Gray, Scott Glenn , Nick Chinlund, Jaime Gomez, and on and on. How did they all get so good?!
This movie is an excellent film due in large part to Denzel Washington who makes everyone around him perform better at their work. Director Antoine Fuqua, and actress Macy Gray openly admitted this on the DVD's special feature segment.
The intensity of Training Day paralyzes the viewer and doesn't let go until the end. This movie is a ride into hell.
So, how does one rate this film, Awful or Excellent?