week of 4/10/02
 
 
 

Flicks
By Hunter Pope
Training Day
Director: Antoine Fuqua
Cast: Denzel Washington, Ethan Hawke, Scott Glenn, Macy Gray
Rating: R—language, strong violence
Notes: Look for Snoop Doggy Dog as a wheelchair dealer, and Macy Gray as the girlfriend of the drug dealer, Sandman.


Denzel Washington is evil. Sure, he put on the glory face when he appeared at the Academy Awards (as well as the stoic one when he won Best Actor), but I know better. I believe there’s a forked tail under that holy armor.

Great acting, you say? Fine. I’ll be the first to proclaim that he does an immaculate thespian turn as twisted LAPD narcotics agent, Alonzo Harris; especially since Denzel is known for his good roles — the one where he activates, captivates, and then motivates the downtrodden (i.e. “John Q,” “Glory,”, “Malcolm X”). He’s a firebrand speaker (which mirrors his real life Baptist inclinations) and we’re used to his characters being more pure than a dove that practices philanthropy.

I’m not stating that Denzel is evil because he portrays evil. I’m being accusatory because Mr. Washington used his best skills in a movie vehicle that’s more like a gutted “Nova” (which means “No Go” in Spanish) than the Mercedes that the critics have called it.

Yes, Denzel has motivated the periphery like he usually does. I was motivated to go out and spend $3 on what I thought would be a thoughtful cop drama. Wrong. The movie starts out stylishly and provoking, but it toilet spirals into a final shootout solution that would have made Arnold Swarzenegger raise a protest sign.

In addition, a lot of my soiled thanks goes to director Antoine Fuqua, who has graduated from the flashy world of commercials and music videos, to directing bomb bullseyes like “Bait” and “The Replacement Killers.” Yuck.

I really didn’t want to open up fresh wounds, but here goes: Rookie cop Jake Hoyt (Ethan Hawke, in what one critic called his best “espresso-bar goatee”) wants to move up in the LAPD ranks. Not for glory, mind you, but so Jake and his new family can move into a bigger home.

Let me stop before I go any further and enact my acidic drivel on Mr. Hawke. He was up for best supporting actor for this role (he lost out to in “Iris”), and I’m relieved that the nomination was as far as it went. Ethan Hawke is good in movies where he plays a sensitive outcast (i.e. “Dead Poets Society,” “Great Expectations”), but playing a tough guy cop with a yard of morals is not one of them. Every time Denzel did something evil, I expected Hawke’s character to find a desk prop that he could stand on and recite, “Oh Captain, My Captain.” Now that would have made for a good time.

Anyway, Jake wants to move up to detective, and the best way to ascend rapidly is doing a stint with narcotics. The movie opens with Jake nervously anticipating his first day of work. He leaves the wife and newborn to meet his new boss, Alonzo Harris, at a downtown diner. Things go awry the minute Jake sits down in the booth. He’s not allowed to interrupt Alonzo during his paper reading, and every time Jake makes a quip, Alonzo shoots a glare and a vocal barb that silences the younger.

And Alonzo is not all that he seems. He wears a black outfit complete with a bandit toboggan, gold crosses and a leather jacket made from a field of cows. The capper is Alonzo’s souped up (and repossessed) 1978 black Monte Carlo that looks like it got stolen from a vintage car expo.

“When do we go to the office?” Jake asks.

“You’re looking at it,” Alonzo says, motioning to the vehicle.

From here on out, the movie is one eye-roller after another. “You got today, and today only, to show me what you’re made of,” Alonzo tells the trainee. For 24 hours, Jake must prove himself in the narcoctics infantry, or he’ll be relegated to ... a smaller home.

And it’s a hell of a 24 hours. Alonzo gets Jake to buy marijuana, and then (at gunpoint) makes Jake smoke his own purchase —“To be truly effective, a good narcotics agent must know and enjoy narcotics,” Alonzo informs his student.

What he doesn’t inform him of, however, is that the joint is laced with PCP. Jake’s mind goes a-reeling as his world turns into one nightmare after another. Double crosses crop up like untamed kudzu. Alonzo leads a second married life. The whole police force (including a branch of unmentionable higher-ups) is on some kind of take. Alonzo beats a couple of crackheads for raping a woman, and then lets them go. Alonzo’s best friend, Roger (Scott Glenn), is a retired LAPD man, who is also the biggest dealer in Orange County.

It was during these moments of numerous plot twists that I found myself actually enjoying the movie, and it left me with a host of questions: Is Alonzo really bad (he’s a decorated 13-year veteran with 15,000 years of incarcerated arrests), or is this the only way to be a successful narcotics agent? In order to understand the streets, don’t you have to actually become the streets?

Too bad the last 30 minutes makes these questions seem obsolete. Ridiculous is too kind a word for the finale ... as well as the stereotypical backdrops. The women are seen as victims, or idly waiting for their man to come home and do as he damn well pleases. Furthermore, almost every hood member is either black or Hispanic (with the latter group bearing scowls, tattoos, and a penchant for the word, “homies”), and the entire L.A. hood is seen as dangerous. Now it’s given that some of L.A.’s neighborhoods are questionable, but the movie makes the hood to be all out bad. I’m sorry, but there’s goodness in every blemish.

Perhaps I’m being harsh because I expected too much. My problem is I’ve become a finicky movie watcher. The more Hollywood shovels at me, the more I react like those fuddy duddy popcorn critics I used to make fun of. Is it outlandish for me to expect that the guy who won Best Actor have a movie to match?

However, a lot of folks may like it for the sheer action and constant happenings (credit that to writer, David Ayer, who grew up in South Central, as well as being the scriptwriter for the “Fast and the Furious”), and it never lets down its guard.

Is it an accurate commentary on the shape of our drug enforcement? It’s hard to say, but at least the star power of Mr. Washington allows viewers to understand that the lines between dealer and do-gooder may be blurry. That’s one facet of the movie I can actually say I appreciated.

It feels good to be bad, and I’ll have to admit that it felt cleansing to scathe the good name of Denzel Washington. No doubt that it was a good piece of acting, and maybe (to the chagrin of myself and Russell Crowe) the Academy was ... right.

It reminds me of a couple of weeks ago when my friend and I were playing some nameless board game. She chose black as her game piece over the more captivating aqua and hunter green.

“Why black?” I asked.

She answered without flinching — “Because evil always wins.”

(Hunter Pope can be reachd at w.h.pope@worldnet.att.net)