Training Day
SIX YEARS BEFORE Training Day debuted in cinemas, David Ayer was struggling. He had been trying to make a living in Hollywood by anticipating what studios might like through spec scripts, and he wasn’t deriving much enjoyment — or money — from his work, with not even a bed or refrigerator to call his own. His path to change began in 1995, when he started penning a screenplay for himself about a young rookie cop and a veteran detective in a rough LA neighbourhood. The result is more than just a premier example of the first day at work often being the toughest. From an all-time-great, Oscar-winning performance by Denzel Washington to an ending that film fans still quote two decades after the fact, Training Day is a tense, twisty and masterful police drama.
And yet, it could all have turned out so differently. In July 1999, Matt Damon and Samuel L. Jackson were initially attached to star as Jake Hoyt and Alonzo Harris, roles that would ultimately belong to Ethan Hawke and Washington. Before Antoine Fuqua signed on to direct, it was David Guggenheim who was going to be calling the shots. It’s less a bullet dodged than the road not taken, but it’s difficult to imagine that film being as effective and iconic as the Training Day that made it to cinemas in 2001.
For one thing, Fuqua’s direction and decision to shoot on location lent the film an unmatched authenticity. From shooting in areas such as the Imperial Courts housing projects in Watts and casting local residents and gang members as extras, to the profuse and streetaccurate usage of the N-word, the essence of life on the streets is faithfully captured. It was ground that Ayer, in particular, would return to again and again, most notably with the excellent End Of Watch (which he directed), another tense LA cop thriller that takes place over the course of a single day.
Another key part of the equation is Washington. Until that point, he had built up a reputation for playing the good, moral men on screen. Whether it was an inspirational coach, a smart lawyer, or, in the case of The Preacher’s Wife, an actual angel, he was always the guy an audience could trust to do the right thing.
In Training Day, Washington does the opposite of the right thing at almost every turn. His performance as corrupt narcotics officer Alonzo Harris is so seductive — and his screen persona had been so ingrained — that we, like Hoyt, keep falling for his act until it’s almost too late.
For the movie to really work, however, Training Day didn’t just need one great performance, but two. With films such as Reality Bites, Great Expectations and Dead Poets Society on his CV, Hawke was already an established star at the time. But despite having the approval of Washington and Fuqua, the studio didn’t want him. After eating some humble pie and jumping through more audition hoops, he
eventually won the role, and the movie is all the better for his casting.
As Hoyt, Hawke has the thankless, arguably more difficult task of trying to hold his own and keep up with Alonzo’s antics and mind games. If Washington is all swaggering charisma, then Hawke — at least initially — is full of nervous energy, before gradually and convincingly evolving into a wiser, hardened survivor over the film’s 24-hour timeline. Hawke charts the journey to perfection, and earned himself a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination in the process.
The compelling and unpredictable dynamic between the seasoned veteran and the young rookie is the engine that powers Training Day, and the manipulation is established in their first scene together at LA’S Quality Cafe on West 7th Street (the same one featured in Seven, Ghost World and Gone In 60 Seconds). Hoyt is no pushover, and yet it’s easy to see how he could be manoeuvred into doing whatever Alonzo wants, whether it be telling him a story or bending and breaking the rules on Alonzo’s say-so. That the entire movie hinges on an act where Hoyt actually protects and serves is one of several smart screenwriting decisions by Ayer.
It makes for a film that’s riveting long before its conclusion, but it’s the final moments that it has become most known for, and for good reason. Ayer may have beavered away on the script for ages, but Alonzo’s famous declaration, “King Kong ain’t got shit on me!”, was improvised on set by Washington, and perfectly captures Alonzo’s falling star and fading confidence. This time, the people in the community Alonzo once ruled do not cower. It’s transcendent cinema.
The bullet-filled demise that follows for Alonzo also wasn’t originally on the cards, but Washington pushed for it. It feels right for the character and the film, as it introduces the idea of consequences for one’s actions, whether you’re hiding behind a badge or not. The world that Training Day was made in was a very different one. Although the movie was partly inspired by the Rampart scandal — a controversy that implicated more than 70 LAPD officers in the late 1990s, and which was tackled in 2011’s Rampart—
and the notion of corruption in the force had been explored in many other films, Training Day
opened just three weeks after 9/11, at a time when cops were being hailed as heroes. Its unsanitised portrayal of police corruption felt fresh and new, shocking and provocative.
Twenty years on, the do-whatever-it-takesto-get-the-job-done versus follow-the-letterof-the-law quandary of Training Day isn’t as potent. But the film, like so much of what Ayer has written and directed since, is far from the ‘copaganda’ we’re so often served.