On Friday, director Antoine Fuqua and Denzel Washington will reunite for The Equalizer, a film version of the 1985 TV series, and their first collaboration since 2001’s Training Day, a film that netted Washington an Academy Award for Best Actor. Although it could easily be argued that Training Day‘s win was a make-good Oscar by the Academy for failing to award Washington for The Hurricane in 1999, your average viewer can still see that Washington gives an impressive and energetic performance as a L.A.’s single most corrupt cop ever. It’s fond memories of Washington in Training Day that are essentially carrying all the good will The Equalizer currently holds.
And while Training Day is often regarded as something of a modern classic – I have talked to several peers and critics who hold the film in very high regard – I feel it is my critical duty to reveal something that we may not want to face: Training Day, for all its acclaim, is just not a very good movie. Indeed, looking back on it, one might find that it’s really awful. This is not just Trolling. Training Day is downright unpleasant.
It’s time to disabuse some notions.
Slideshow: 8 Reasons Why ‘Training Day’ is a Bad Movie
Witney Seibold is a contributor to the CraveOnline Film Channel, and co-host of The B-Movies Podcast. You can read his weekly Trolling articles here on Crave, and follow him on “Twitter” at @WitneySeibold, where he is slowly losing his mind.
8 Reasons Why Training Day is a Bad Movie
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The Main Character Sucks
No, not Alonzo Harris. Sure, he's the star, but the actual protagonist of the film – y'know, the one who isn't a corrupt monster – is Jake Hoyt, played with a twitchy fear by Ethan Hawke. Jake is the kind of character you kind of have to fight to remember. This is no slight to Hawke, who does what he can with the off-putting dialogue, but to the writing. For a film called Training Day, ostensibly structured around a rookie being trained, the film doesn't bother to make the main character very interesting. We need someone who can match Alonzo Harris. Jake is not that man.
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The Story Sucks
Can you recall the story of Training Day? I can't either. Indeed, looking back over the cast listing, I find I can't remember what roles a lot of recognizable actors played. Like when did Tom Berenger show up? What role did he play? Was he a cop or a criminal? I think he was a cop. I know Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, and Macy Gray all had small roles, but I'll be darned if I can remember what parts they played in the story. I appreciate a good character study, but I also like those character studies to have complex and interesting scenarios as well. Think of L.A. Confidential. Training Day has no such scenarios. Training Day is a dull mish-mash of criminal stuff.
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It's Ugly to Look At
Training Day was filmed during an unfortunate time in feature film photography, when filmmakers were started to adopt an artificial type of super-grainy grime to indicate corruption. It didn't look good in any of the films to come before Training Day, and it still doesn't look good in Training Day. The photography may vaguely evoke the filth of the streets, but gives that filth an all-too-professional sheen that is just downright unattractive. Watching Training Day for only a few seconds reveals it frantic, ugly style. The film cost $45 million to make, but it looks like it was shot on cheapo 2001-era digital cameras.
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It's Not As Deep As You Think It Is
The central ethical message of Training Day is a simple and ancient one: Do the ends justify the means? Alonzo Harris is a violent and evil man, but he does manage to apprehend criminals. Should he be allowed to continue being violent and evil if he's doing his job so well? Call me odd, but the answer seems very clear to me: No, Alonzo should not be allowed to continue, because he's an evil jerk who breaks the law. He is more than corrupt. He's insane. All the alleged ambivalence of the film falls completely flat because the main character is so evil. That's not complex or even all that interesting.
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It's Really a B-Movie in Disguise
Training Day is not a serious film. The premise, the dialogue – indeed anything about David Ayer's clunky screenplay – reeks of low budget grindhouse silliness. Training Day is a screenplay of genuinely dumb sleaze wrapped in a slick coat of artificial sleaze. No matter how much gravitas Washington brings to the dialogue, it's hard to take all that seriously. A better screenplay would have had a tighter story, and glimpses of redemption. Training Day is actually just an exploitation movie, playing on audience's desire to see a well-known actor cut loose. It's yet another example of a film that would have been better with a tenth of the budget and a different director.
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It's Racist and Sexist
David Ayer has always been a little dodgy in his approaches to race and gender. In his films – Training Day being no exception – the criminals are seen as uniformly black or uniformly Latino, usually flaunting their criminal wickedness with an almost cartoon exaggeration. The women aren't too much better, in that they are all typically sleazy floozies. I'm sure Ayer and Fuqua didn't intend to present their black characters as caricatures (indeed, Fuqua is a black man), instead trying to present the whole neighborhood as being corrupt, but when you begin to notice the color coding, it's hard look past it.
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The Main Character is Not Interesting
Well, maybe “not interesting” is harsh language. Denzel Washington really does give his all, sputtering, screaming, and throwing himself into Alonzo with energetic aplomb. From a visceral standpoint, Alonzo is exhilarating. But Alonzo's appeal doesn't reach beyond the visceral. On the page, Alonzo is so evil, that we eventually stop seeing him as a corrupt cop and more like a slasher movie villain. And I suppose Alonzo does function as the film's villain, but if this is a character study, then we have a really dull villain. He has bland motivations, and no actual complexity. After a while, one can only see Alonzo as a flat villainous archetype.
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It's Just Unpleasant
Don't get me wrong, I love a good fistful of sleaze. I love films about sleazy characters doing evil things. One of my favorite films of last year was Martin Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street, one of the sleaziest movies I've seen in a while. But in order to make a film about sleaze tolerable, one must have a point of view. One must be able to see the sleaze as mad, but still fun in some way. Something that lets us into the minds of the characters living in said sleaze. Training Day doesn't have a point of view on wickedness. It just rubs our noses in it, grinding our faces into the filth, all while screaming “Isn't this horrible?” Yes it is. It's an adolescent view of filth, and one that leaves the viewer feeling unclean and kind of gross.
