Movie Scene
Denzel Washington turns in seductive performance in 'Training Day'

By Marshall Fine
The (Westchester, N.Y.) Journal News

TRAINING DAY (Rated R for profanity, nudity, graphic violence) Three Stars (Good) A rookie has one day to prove himself to his new partner, an undercover narcotics cop who has his own set of rules for the street. Starring Denzel Washington, Ethan Hawke. Directed by Antoine Fuqua. Warner Bros. 116 mins.

Young Jake Hoyt (Ethan Hawke) has no clue what he's in for when he sets off to spend a day training with Harris, an undercover veteran. All he knows is that, if he can make the right impression, he will be able to move from a uniformed beat to undercover narcotics duty.

Right from the jump, however, Harris is a prickly fellow. Everything he says — even sitting over coffee in a nondescript diner — is meant to challenge Jake, to keep him off-balance. He shifts from smiling collegially to snake-eyed murderousness in the blink of an eye.

Life on the street is a war, he tells his young protege, made up of sheep and wolves: "You have to decide if you're a sheep or a wolf, if you want to go to the grave or go home," he says. And he means it all, literally as well as figuratively.

For Jake, who has spent his short police career learning the rules, life on the street with Harris is an eye-opener. Harris plays by his own rules, bending and reshaping laws to suit his own situation in ways that go far beyond situational ethics. Harris' personal code: Do unto others, and take with both hands.

He pulls Jake into his web in the process, finding ways to leverage Jake's uncertainty into a compromising situation. Before long, he has a stranglehold on his young partner's unhappy conscience, giving him the power to call the shots. Harris is a stickler for the blue-wall school of police work: Loyalty to one's partner trumps allegiance to one's wife or even to the law itself. But his loyalty test goes far beyond what Jake could have imagined.

The subtext obviously is the Los Angeles police scandals of the 1990s, involving one division. While the plot doesn't parallel those problems, it captures that culture of arrogance and entitlement that seemed to be part of that story.Fuqua finds ways to make this movie quiver with adrenaline and anxiety, as the ground continually shifts beneath the feet of the honest young cop. Fuqua understands the theatrical nature of undercover work: that you sometimes become who you pretend to be.

The question is: Who is Harris pretending to be — and who is he really?

What keeps you guessing is the performance of Washington, who has never attempted a character like this. Where actors such as Samuel L. Jackson, Laurence Fishburne and Delroy Lindo have moved from playing villains to heroes, Washington has built his career on a stainless image that barely hinted at this kind of attitude.

Here, he finds the poisonous charm of a fellow who just as easily could have been playing this game from the other side of the law. He occasionally shows the tarnished ideals that once served as Harris' strength, but coats them with an astringent cynicism that can be frightening to behold.

Hawke makes a solid foil: an upright young guy who will always be too square to have the kind of easy street credibility that Harris wears like his skin. The young actor captures the many levels of uncertainty of this character: of a rookie on a new job; of a white man trying to bridge the ethnic gap; of a straight arrow trying to follow an increasingly crooked path.

"Training Day" is tough stuff, harrowing and seductive at the same time. Despite its length, Washington's live-wire performance keeps you watching with horrified fascination.

Rated R for profanity, nudity, graphic violence.