Review: Training Day

Ethan Hawke is rookie cop Jake Hoyt, who wants to be a narcotics officer. He’s excited to be given the opportunity to ride with Detective Sergeant Alonzo Harris, an experienced officer. However, Alonzo isn’t gonna make this ‘ride along’ easy for the young pup, and Hoyt soon learns that Alonzo is no ordinary cop. Hoyt’s about to get tested as he finds in this training day that the line between cop and crook, right and wrong might just get redefined. Scott Glenn plays a retired cop friend of Alonzo’s, whilst Nick Chinlund and Peter Greene are a couple of cop associates. Tom Berenger, Harris Yulin, and Raymond J. Barry turn up as higher-ups in the law enforcement/justice field. Eva Mendes and singer (ish) Macy Gray play, respectively Alonzo’s main squeeze and a woman whose house gets searched by Alonzo, without warrant.

Overblown, clichéd Antoine Fuqua (The misguided “King Ahfa, Lord of the Cockney Soccer Hooligans”, the awfully dull “Tears of the Sun”, and the excellent boxing flick “Southpaw”) directed, David Ayer (“End of Watch”, “Street Kings”) scripted police flick from 2001 somehow won Denzel an Oscar for one of the silliest performances of his fairly dignified career. I didn’t like this at the time and I probably like it even less now.

5 minutes in and Denzel’s dopey swagger and hippity hop car tires/wheels had me checking out already, somewhat. He won an Oscar for putting on a front playing a guy putting on a front. It results in a pantomime of a performance that is thoroughly beneath the genuinely talented actor. He’s supposed to be a charming cop gone completely to seed, but I think he’s a silly poseur. Yes, such silly bravado and posturing are part of the point, but Denzel just doesn’t make it convincing. It’s such a phony act he may as well have gold teeth, a clock around his neck, and a ring with a diamond-encrusted dollar sign on it. I like the idea of the film and the idea of the Denzel character, but the execution is botched and overpitched. I didn’t buy the performance, nor did I believe in the character as an undercover cop. In fact, the clichés here didn’t bother me quite as much as just how overblown the whole thing is, and Denzel’s performance is at the centre of the problem. Did he really have to have the bouncy wheel car? Undercover or not, it’s moronic. His histrionics in the finale are actually embarrassing.

It’s a shame, because the performances by Ethan Hawke and especially Scott Glenn are quite good. Hawke impressed me more this time around than on first viewing, and Glenn steals his two big scenes. There’s also an amusing cameo by Snoop Dogg as a wheelchair-bound drug dealer. I’m not even sure why it’s funny, but it is. It’s a shame though, that talented character actors Harris Yulin, Tom Berenger, and Raymond J. Barry are thoroughly wasted in mere cameos. I think a film focussing more on their characters would’ve been infinitely more interesting than the one Fuqua, Ayer, and Flava Denzel give us.

There’s nothing in this overblown, silly film that the likes of “Narc” and “Dark Blue” didn’t do infinitely better. Denzel is ridiculous in a role Wesley Snipes and Ving Rhames were born for, and sadly Ethan Hawke and Scott Glenn aren’t miracle workers. Too long, too ridiculous, too dull. Thoroughly overrated.

Rating: C