Cheap Training Day (DVD) (Denzel Washington, Ethan Hawke) (Antoine Fuqua) Price

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Customer Reviews of Training Day

Excellent acting / great script / good extras
Training Day, as an entire film is great. The dvd extras make this dvd extra special. You get deleted scenes , dir. commentary, music videos , and an alternate ending. Most times the "alternate ending " , added to newer dvd's, motivate me to buy it. Although, 9 times out of 10, you get an instant idea of why it was deleted ,in the first place. However, just to have that viewing option , it's worth the investment. Anyway, the film's actors deliver phenominal performances and catipult a simple script ,into a film that not only ,studies the motivations and psychology of people dealing with the corruption and life on the streets, but entertain and shock the viewers. As you should already know, Denzel Washington took home an Academy Award after his portrayal of a corrupt undercover police officer,in this production. Ethan Hawk, also works through his role as a rookie cop , with excellent believability and intensity. Although , this film has valuable lessons to learn , I don't recommend that you view this with the little ones. It contains scenes of drug use , very foul language, and graphic violence. Despite those aspects , Training Day offers a rare glimpse into the harsh realities of crime and deseption. Definately a dvd to buy. Even if you're not into the bad cop /good cop movies, seeing Denzel play a charcter that's as evil as his best good guy roles were , in the past, makes it worth your while. Alot of people I know were shocked that he could play bad, so good. But if they'd noticed , he gave a fantastic sinister performance as the younger juvenile Malcom X , in the Spike Lee movie. Anyway.......order Training Day and buckle your seat belts.

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It ain't Colors (but it's close)
Training Day (Antione Fuqua, 2001)

Fuqua, who has directed scores of music videos and
made his big-screen debut with the impressive Chow
Yun-Fat vehicle The Replacement Killers (1998), offers
up his most recent flick, Training Day. The movie
takes us through the first day on the undercover
narcotics squad of LAPD officer Jake Hoyt (Ethan
Hawke), who's riding along with the head of the unit,
Alonzo Harris (Denzel Washington). It doesn't take too
long before Hoyt realizes that the life of an
undercover officer ain't what gets taught at the
police academy.

As should be obvious, comparisons to Dennis Hopper's
brilliant 1988 film _Colors_ are inevitable, and
they're warranted. Screenwriter David Ayer (U-571, The
Fast and the Furious) had to realize while writing
this that the comparisons were going to happen, and
there are few films, especially cop films, that won't
suffer in comparison. Ayer uses the one-day timeframe
as one of the differences between the two films; he
also adds a couple of subplots, some that work, some
that don't. But like _Colors_, the true basis of the
film is an exploration of the personalities of the two
main characters, how they conflict, and how the older
cop (Washington, in this case, playing the same role
Robert Duvall did in the earlier movie) has to combine
the wisdom of the law officer with the street
sensibility of the thug in order to survive from day
to day, much less actually get anything done.

While Hawke and Washington don't have the same
chemistry as Duvall and Penn, Training Day doesn't hit
you over the head with its plot quite as hard as
Colors did. It also avoids the morality-tale mentality
until the last twenty minutes or so of the film (one
wonders, idly, if the film had a different ending
originally and got a re-shoot after test-marketing).
Alonzo Harris is a bad guy, pure and simple (and it's
refreshing to see Denzel Washington play someone who's
not squeaky-clean), but that doesn't make him any less
competent at his job, or any less believable when
dispensing various bits of homily on how to survive as
an undercover narcotics officer. It also makes the
first portion of the film's climax (surprisingly long
and surprisingly interest-holding) that much more
unexpected when it finally does occur.

And herein, actually, is the one place the film really
screws up. Training Day's climax opens with one hell
of a large coincidence which could have been derailed
at any one of a number of places along the way, and
some of the characters in the film have to slip out of
character at times in order for the coincidence to
take shape (note that this is unnoticeable until the
event in question happens, but it leaves a slightly
sour aftertaste). A little rewriting earlier in the
film might have solved this problem.

One last note of comparison between the two is in the
uniformly high quality of the supporting casts in both
films. In Training Day, Fuqua gives us a number of
folks who are starting to pop up in a lot of
supporting roles these days, from the surprisingly
talented Snoop Dogg to the big-screen debut of Macy
Gray (with better hair than usual, and thus
unrecognizable). Special attention should be paid to
Eva Mendes as Denzel's main squeeze and Cliff Curtis
(last seen by a wide audience torturing Mark Wahlberg
in Three Kings) as one of his top informants. Curtis,
especially, is on his way up in the world, and fast.

Overall, there are enough errors in Training Day to
still make Colors the better film, but this was one
fine shot at the title. After viewing, let it sink in
for a while, as its full measure takes a while and
some reflection to settle in. ****

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I hated this movie
I first of all am not a Denzel Washington fan. So my review is a little biase in the sense that I went in thinking this movie was going to be bad....and boy was it. I first want to say that Denzel Washington is a good actor he just doesn't do anything for me. I thought this movie was waaaayyyy over the top unrealistic and I could not in good consious recommend it. For one thing all the singers and rappers in the movie who can't act took away from any beliveable scenario. Ethan Hawkes character was such a wimp he had literally no back bone. Every "bad" thing that Denzels character wanted him to do he did it. I think this is one of the worse movies I ever seen. And the ending who didn't see that coming a mile away.