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Training Day was OK. I'd give it two-and-a-half to three out of five stars.
It wants to be a Sidney Lumet movie for the 21st Century. In his long career, Lumet is responsible for such gritty police procedurals as Serpico (1973), Prince of the City (1981), Q&A (1990) and Night Falls on Manhattan (1997), all of which examined the murky netherworld of over-the-line Police departments, the corruptable system from the street-level on up.
Training Day is probably nearly as good as Lumet's lesser films, Q&A and Night Falls on Manhattan, but falls decidedly short of Prince of the City and it's not even close to Serpico.
For director Antoine Fuqua, who's previous efforts were the ho-hum transplanted Hong Kong actioner wannabe The Replacement Killers (1998) starring Chow Yun-Fat and the forgettable thriller with an awkward dash of Beverly Hills Cop humor called Bait (2000) starring Jamie Foxx, Training Day is a step toward more mature and ambitious pictures.
But the material is too straight-forward and muh too well-trodden to really amaze. It's competent, but very familiar.
The highlight, as you might suspect, is Denzel Washington's performance. It is intense and focused without going over-the-top. He's not as altogether scary as Nick Nolte's perverted racist in Q&A, but he does have his chilling moments, wrapped in an outer shell of charm and apparent ability. It's not Denzel's best work by a long shot, but solidly entertaining and engrossing. I'm not generally a fan of Ethan Hawke's, but he's fine as the standard naive, idealistic do-gooder who finds himself drowning in a moral and ethical crisis.
I'd say Training Day is a bit better than some of the other entries in this sub-genre over the past decade or so, like Internal Affairs (1990), The Corruptor (1999), One Good Cop (1991), and One Tough Cop (1998), but not a whole LOT better. It's probably closest to CopLand (1997), which was fairly basic but made better by the cast and representation of that town. Training Day is elevated by Denzel and the slightly stylized nightmare of the hot L.A. locales. It's enough to recommend the picture, but don't go in expecting to see anything new.
In the end, Training Day is decent, but too routine. I've been for a ride-along in this cop car before.
It wants to be a Sidney Lumet movie for the 21st Century. In his long career, Lumet is responsible for such gritty police procedurals as Serpico (1973), Prince of the City (1981), Q&A (1990) and Night Falls on Manhattan (1997), all of which examined the murky netherworld of over-the-line Police departments, the corruptable system from the street-level on up.
Training Day is probably nearly as good as Lumet's lesser films, Q&A and Night Falls on Manhattan, but falls decidedly short of Prince of the City and it's not even close to Serpico.
For director Antoine Fuqua, who's previous efforts were the ho-hum transplanted Hong Kong actioner wannabe The Replacement Killers (1998) starring Chow Yun-Fat and the forgettable thriller with an awkward dash of Beverly Hills Cop humor called Bait (2000) starring Jamie Foxx, Training Day is a step toward more mature and ambitious pictures.
But the material is too straight-forward and muh too well-trodden to really amaze. It's competent, but very familiar.
The highlight, as you might suspect, is Denzel Washington's performance. It is intense and focused without going over-the-top. He's not as altogether scary as Nick Nolte's perverted racist in Q&A, but he does have his chilling moments, wrapped in an outer shell of charm and apparent ability. It's not Denzel's best work by a long shot, but solidly entertaining and engrossing. I'm not generally a fan of Ethan Hawke's, but he's fine as the standard naive, idealistic do-gooder who finds himself drowning in a moral and ethical crisis.
I'd say Training Day is a bit better than some of the other entries in this sub-genre over the past decade or so, like Internal Affairs (1990), The Corruptor (1999), One Good Cop (1991), and One Tough Cop (1998), but not a whole LOT better. It's probably closest to CopLand (1997), which was fairly basic but made better by the cast and representation of that town. Training Day is elevated by Denzel and the slightly stylized nightmare of the hot L.A. locales. It's enough to recommend the picture, but don't go in expecting to see anything new.
In the end, Training Day is decent, but too routine. I've been for a ride-along in this cop car before.