Cinema Views with Kevin J. Walker

Hardcore "Training Day" with Hawke and Denzel Takes Us to School

"Training Day" is yet another Hollywood release that fell victim to the knee-jerk reaction following the horrific dive-bombing attacks of September 11. Among those film affected is Arnold Schwarzenegger's "Collateral Damage" about a vengeful father against a terrorist who slew his family. The plot involves a bomb in a skyscraper.

What could the connection, here with "Training Day," you ask? I said it was an overreaction, like the Emmys being postponed a second time because a place 8,000 miles away was being bombed. The studio honchos said it's because Denzel Washington’s chilling portrayal of a twisted cop is so affecting that it was thought to be disrespectful of police so soon after hundreds of them died with firemen in the rubble of the collapsed twin towers of the World Trade Center.

This is even after the NYPD was more widely known beforehand for firing 41 shots into an unarmed African immigrant entrepreneur standing in his own hallway clutching his wallet, and other rogue cops held down and pushed a baton up into the rectum of Abner Louima, another Black man.

In "Training Day" directed by Anton Fuqua, Washington co-stars with Ethan Hawke, Scott Glenn, Snoop Dogg, Tom Berenger, Dr. Dre and Macy Gray as an undercover LAPD officer with a highly elastic sense of morality and professional ethics as he goes about putting away the Bad Guys, many of whom can’t hold a candle to him.

"Forget all that stuff they taught you in the academy, it'll get you killed out here... Nobody'll trust you unless you have a little dirt on you," he tells his young charge. Jake Hoyt is an idealistic rookie who wants to be in the thick of things, but soon starts to rethink what it means to be in the gritty city with no pity. Serpico would understand perfectly. He also just wanted to be a good cop, and make a difference in the lives of decent people who look to the police but found the bureaucracy was in his way.

The rookie doesn't know what to think when he sees his respected and decorated mentor in a suspect's bedroom during a drug search, sticking things into his jacket pockets. People who say that the reason there are so many so-called "Known Drug Houses" --a ridiculous concept in itself-- have maintained that corrupt elements of the police use them much like ATM machines, to get some quick cash when they run low and so have allowed many of them to keep operating.

"Training Day" isn’t a Cop/Buddy film, it’s more in the tradition of "Karate Kid" and "Star Wars A New Hope," where the cop played by Denzel is more like a Mr. Miyagi or Obi Wan to Hawke’s naïve Karate Kid/Luke Skywalker.

"This is the office," Alonzo says as they tool along the streets in the hyped up Monte Carlo with pneumatic lifts. "Roll down the windows. You want to smell the city, you want to hear the sounds," he says. We in the audience are rapt, and absorbing it as well, as we allow ourselves to be led like sheep.

Be advised that this is a hard-core film. Its latest rival in that regard was the DeNiro film "15 Minutes" about a beloved New York cop and his young NYFD cohort played by "Saving Pvt. Ryan’s" Edward Burns. They're trying to track down a duo of whacked-out east European refugees as they try to get rich in decadent America by videotaping their evil deeds for an insatiable media, personified by Kelsey Grammar.

Both films have some hardcore violence, but "Training Day" surpasses most of recent memory, and ranks among Washington’s best film performances yet. When he explains his outwardly amoral way of dealing with street scum you start to believe him.

"We’re Wolves, and we go after other Wolves" he tells his young recruit, hoping to pass from patrolman to undercover detective, and doesn’t understand why they just let some known street dealers and lawbreakers go free.

"We're professional anglers, we go after the big fish, the main crooks, not these petty dealers. It may take some time, and we have to do some funny stuff, but that’s what it takes to get them off the street. Judges are kept employed by me. They build new wings on prisons because of the things I do.

"You protect the sheep by killing the wolf. So, do you wanna be a Wolf, and help me go after them? Or do you want to be helping him out," he says, indicating a blue-uniformed officer helping a stranded motorist near the curb. "If this kinda thing shakes you, go back and call your Watch Commander and tell him that you want a job lighting flares by accidents.

"I used to be like you" Alonzo tells Jake Hoyt sympathetically. "I know what you're going through. But it's a whole new world that opens up for you when you start to play The Game. Then you can make Detective, and grow wise, and advance. Then you can start to change things," he tells Jake soothingly, and it sounds all good.

"What do ya say? Wanna be with me, and run with the Wolves? Arr-ROOO!" Denzel howls, flashing his trademark smile.

This is also Hawke’s best, and is his transition to action and suspense. He made artsy films such as the modern remake of "Great Expectations" with Robert DeNiro, as the disaffected alienated young man he portrayed in several other films such as "Snow Falling On Cedars," "Reality Bites" and "Gattaca," the science fiction movie with Uma Thurman about genetic discrimination in the near future.

Here as the fast-learning recruit under Alonzo’s wing he will win more fans with his intensity and easygoing acting. With these two top-notch actors its like we’re watching through the dashboard mounted cameras on those "COPs" reality TV shows; we’re eavesdroppers as they spend one tumultuous day on the mean streets of Los Angeles.

There’s an Androcles and The Lion subplot, and a bit of a moral to the story. Is there honour among thieves — or Wolves? Is it possible to Do Good while using the same methods as the Bad Guys do? Is it even worth it?

"Training Day" is an excellent movie and I was spellbound, as was most of the advance viewing audience two weeks ago before the movie was finally released. Jeffrey Marker didn’t see the need for the overuse of the N-word, until I explained that it wasn’t the same N-word, or "Furhman Word" he was thinking of.

"When he asks Ethan Hawke ‘Are you my Nigga?" or praises him with ‘That’s my nigga!’ he’s saying like it like Samuel Jackson or Ving Rhames in ‘Pulp Fiction,’ it means My Guy,'" I tried to explain.

"Oh, and the ‘n’ is silent, so NiggA isn’t NiggER" I added helpfully.

Jeffrey wasn’t having it, he said the word is still offensive to him, doesn’t like it used around him and he’s not even Black, and that many of these movies could do well without it. Me, I understand its use to capture a realistic sense of the excellent street level dialog in "Training Day" and thought it and the cussing gave it heightened realism.

The film finally started last Friday and became number one at the box office after being held because of the nation’s raw sensitivities so soon after the dive-bombings in New York City and Washington, DC. Another Denzel Washington film that was unnecessarily yanked from viewing on broadcast, satellite and cable the same week was "The Siege," about terrorist bombings in New York, which will soon be the subject of a Video Views special.

That political film with Annette Bening and Arab-Wisconsinite Tony Shalhoub of Green Bay made an excellent point about media complicity and terrorism, where the hostage takers would wait until the media showed up before they acted, and thereby activated the other Sleepers.

Far from being pulled, "The Siege" is one movie that we need to see and absorb, so as to make better sense of the events of September 11, 2001. And the other events that will follow.

kevinjwalker@lycos.com; cinemaviews.tripod.com; www.thebwp.com/wire. Write to p.o. box 1324-53201, or call (414) 454-9673. Fax is (559) 851-7087. —kjw

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