Wick's Review

Summary - Perfect 5.0

Training Day is a perfect bad-cop movie, with a towering performance from Denzel, all in as the baddest man to ever carry a shield. Supported by several stellar actors in juicy parts, perfectly directed by Antoine Fuqua from martial specialist David Ayer’s knowing script, Training Day unspools macho declamatory exhortations ad nauseam, many delivered by D. Washington in one of Hollywood’s greatest performances.

The Academy recognized this, awarding Big D his first and so far only Best Actor Oscar, his previous Academy Award being for his inimitable supporting role in Glory. That a role of such surpassing badness led to him becoming only the second black man to win the Best Actor Oscar¹ makes the whole thing racially Shakespearean. Then, this is Hollywood…

Hollywood is more about engaging than uplifting. Bad guys – intrinsically interesting – are engaging as hell from the safety of a darkened theater. Ain’t right but it’s true. Engaging the audience in the illusion of visible truth is Hollywood’s raison d’être. That and selling tickets. Training Day does both: creates a tremendously engaging illusion of truth and succeeds as commercial catnip.

¹ Sydney Poitier was the first.

Acting - Really Great 4.5

Magnum tour de force from Denzel Washington as Alonzo Harris, Detective “Go to jail or go home” himself, a man so good at his high cash flow business that he went off the deep end – still holding it together. Not many actors could pull off this kind of serious shit. Denzel won an Oscar for it.

Damn right. The actor who made us love him by playing heroes plays a fantasy dogg. I call him a dogg. So does he. He also calls it the N word, but I don’t play that shit.

Snoop Dogg & Dr. Dre are entirely in place here, illin’ in the hood.

Proven tough guys Scott Glenn and Tom Berenger toughen up any movie. Fit right in here.

What about Ethan Hawke? Got an Oscar nom out of his young and oh-so-put-upon hero cop. This actor – with every bit the talent and looks of Tom Cruise – operates here mostly as deluded wingman. Credibly so. Strong safety in high school, we’re informed, he handles himself like a DB cop, backpedaling mostly, laying the wood when the time comes – playing defense.

Trio of other notables.

• Eva Mendes, young and in lingerie, one of her few lines something unintelligible after she apparently services Denzel.
• Harris Yulin, villainous character actor. 24’s Roger Stanton chews a line like most guys chew a New York Strip.
• Raymond J. Barry, now being seen as Arlo Givens, senior crime baron to Timothy Olyphant’s Marshal Raylan Givens on the terrific new series Justified.

Film - Really Great 4.5

Perfectly directed by Antoine Fuqua, who has never again come close to directing anything nearly as well. Of course, that is a tall order.

Edge - Sordid 3.4

Vile, brutal & titillating, in descending degree of edginess. Hide the ladies and children. We’re talking some nasty shit here.

Reality - Surreal 2.1

The story achieves a crazy nihilistic suspension of disbelief only because of the insidious effects – money and desperation – of drug commerce. Watching this, I couldn’t help thinking about what’s going on in Mexico right about now. That much nasty money makes all kinds of shit go down.

3 Comments

• MJ5K Jul 6, 2010 9:39PM

  Speaking of bad cops, I just saw Crash the other day and I thought it was phenomenal. I may have to review it.

• Wick Jul 5, 2010 7:49PM

  Yeah, if you like movies about cops gone bad, this one pegs the meter.

• MJ5K Jul 5, 2010 7:02PM

  Regarding Wick’s Review
  Hm, I actually saw a bit of Training Day on HBO the other day and thought “This looks interesting”. But now that I’ve read your review, Wick, I really wanna see it.

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