Training Day

What is justice? How far are we willing to go to see it? Is it all right for an overworked, underpaid cop to stick a quarter of a million ill-gotten dollars under his coat, so long as the criminals are brought down? Can we accept the notion of a narcotics officer consuming large amounts of the very substances he tries to remove from the streets, if it helps him infiltrate the bad guys? And just who are the "bad guys," and are they really that bad? Training Day asks these questions and more, resulting in what is almost a truly thought-provoking masterpiece. Unfortunately, the climax sees fit to answer all those questions, replacing the shades-of-gray brilliance of the first two acts with cliched fisticuffs and coincidental plot machinations.

Meet Detective Alonzo Harris (Denzel Washington), a street thug with a badge, prowling the streets of South Central in his Monte Carlo, beating up college kids and using fake search warrants to obtain evidence. You're horrified, and so is his trainee, Jake Hoyt (Ethan Hawke), until Alonzo points out the unavoidable fact that he gets the job done. His methods may not be completely on the level, but they work. Even the street gangs respect him, letting him roam their "jungle" unheeded. Not to mention that Alonzo is a pretty cool guy himself -- his wit and charm make his already persuasive argument pretty easy to swallow. At first, Jake resists, clinging to his innocent beliefs, but soon finds himself toking up on PCP-laced marijuana and drinking on duty at Alonzo's insistence.

The majority of the film is comprised of Alonzo and Jake cruising in "the office" (Alonzo's car) and discussing the merits of the street justice approach. "To protect the sheep," Alonzo says, "you've got to catch a wolf...and it takes a wolf to catch a wolf." As the day progresses, Jake finds himself deeper and deeper in the web of the L.A. drug world, and Alonzo's ideas seem like a pretty good idea after all. But as more of that web is revealed, and Jake is involved in high-tension shootouts with bandana-wearing gangstas, he begins to wonder just where the line should be drawn. And that's where Training Day goes off the rails. Too bad.

The performances are incredible. This may not be the best work of Denzel's career, but it is a stunning, against-type performance. Alonzo is just dripping with confidence and charisma, turning into blind rage on a dime. It's totally credible, and completely unforgettable, more than worthy of the long-overdue Best Actor Oscar. Hawke brings a genuine sense of wide-eyed innocence to Jake, but it's not a stupid innocence -- he's got a good head on his shoulders, but he's wholly unprepared for what Alonzo shows him. The supporters are good all around, with special attention to be given to rappers Snoop Doggy Dogg as a wheelchair-bound crack dealer and Dr. Dre as one of Alonzo's thugs. Actual gang members appear as extras in the film, and the gangs allowed the filmmakers to actually enter their territory for use in the movie -- the end result being an unending sense of realism. You can feel the grit of L.A.'s drug zones pouring from the screen in every scene. It makes me glad I don't live in Los Angeles anymore.

The realism holds up until the aforementioned third-act climax, anyway, which turns Training Day into a joke of coincidental storytelling. In describing the events, you would have to use the phrase "just happens" a lot -- "This guy just happens to find this over here, which just happens to do this, and so he just happens..." and so on. When the sun goes down in the film, the characters jump from thought-provoking cinema into Lethal Weapon 5. It's disheartening, and downright depressing.

But the first 100 minutes are electrifying, and only point toward the masterpiece that may have been. I still like it enough to give it a full recommendation, but be prepared for some eye rolling as the last reel kicks in. Training Day definitely passes, but it could have been so much more.

Rating: ***1/2