Training Day (2001)
★★★½ — Training Day (2001)
Training Day arrived in cinemas in October 2001, produced through a partnership between WV Films II, Village Roadshow Pictures, and NPV Entertainment. The film drops us into a single, punishing day in Los Angeles, following a newly assigned narcotics detective as he rides with a veteran officer whose methods turn out to be, to put it generously, unorthodox. It is a premise rooted in a long tradition of American police procedural filmmaking, one that sits alongside the corrupt-cop stories that Hollywood has periodically returned to ever since the genre found its footing in the 1970s. Where Training Day distinguishes itself from much of that tradition is in its almost suffocating focus on the two leads rather than on any broader institutional critique, making it feel, for better or worse, more like a character study dressed up as a thriller.
Antoine Fuqua, whose other work you can get a sense of in my review of Shooter, directs from a screenplay by David Ayer, who drew on his own experiences growing up in South Central Los Angeles. Fuqua had been working in music videos and commercials before moving into features, and Training Day represented a significant step up in ambition and profile for him. The production leans on handheld camerawork and location shooting to give the film a lived-in, street-level texture, the sort of approach that can feel either gritty and authentic or self-consciously stylised depending on your tolerance for that aesthetic. The supporting cast includes Scott Glenn, Tom Berenger, and Harris Yulin in smaller but well-cast roles, each adding a bit of weight to the world the film builds around its central duo.
The two leads are really what the conversation always comes back to with this one. Denzel Washington is, by almost any measure, at the peak of his considerable powers here, and the performance earned him the Academy Award for Best Actor, one of the more clear-cut decisions the Academy has made in that category in recent memory. Washington had long been one of the most watchable actors working in American cinema, as anyone who caught him in Virtuosity would already know, but the role of Detective Alonzo Harris gave him something different to work with, a character who requires the audience to hold charisma and menace in their heads simultaneously. Ethan Hawke, meanwhile, received his own Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor, which was a fair acknowledgement of the difficult job he had: playing the reactive, more morally conventional character without being overshadowed or reduced to a simple foil. The crime genre has produced some genuinely great double-act performances over the years, and as I looked at in my review of The Raid 2, it is often the friction between two contrasting figures that gives crime films their real engine.
Training Day (2001) is a gripping, atmospheric cop thriller elevated by a powerhouse performance from Denzel Washington as Detective Alonzo Harris, a corrupt LAPD narcotics officer who takes rookie Jake Hoyt (Ethan Hawke) on a 24-hour descent through the moral underbelly of Los Angeles. Denzel is charismatic, unpredictable, terrifying. He fully embodies the role of a man who’s long since stopped pretending he’s on the side of justice, and his presence alone gives the film a constant sense of danger. The first two acts are strong, tense, immersive, dripping with paranoia and street-level realism. Antoine Fuqua’s direction leans into the grit, using handheld cameras and natural lighting to make you feel like you’re riding shotgun through South Central at its most volatile. Ethan Hawke holds his own as the idealistic cop forced to navigate a day where every rule gets broken, and the dynamic between the two leads crackles with tension. That said, it’s not the masterpiece it’s often hyped up to be. The story feels rushed, especially in the final act, where plot threads collapse under their own weight. The climax devolves into near-parody, super cliché, and the ending is deeply unsatisfying. Loose ends aren’t just left dangling; they’re ignored entirely. For a film about consequence and corruption, there’s shockingly little closure or thematic payoff. It’s also nowhere near the level of similar films like Narc, Serpico, or L.A. Confidential, films that balance character, theme, and narrative depth with far more precision. Well-acted, intense, and undeniably watchable, but flawed in structure and resolution. A strong vehicle for Denzel’s Oscar-winning turn, but ultimately more style than substance. Worth seeing, just don’t expect a classic.
So where does that leave Training Day in the broader landscape of early 2000s American crime cinema? For me, it is one of those films that I find myself recommending with a slight but honest caveat attached, the kind where you say "watch it for the performance" and mean it without reservation, but where you also feel obliged to flag that the film around that performance is polished but unremarkable in places and frankly wobbles in others. Denzel Washington carries it further than the script probably deserves. I think there is a version of this story, with the same cast and director, that could have been genuinely great, if the final act had been given the same care and discipline as the first two. As it stands, it is a film I'm glad exists, mostly because that central performance would have been a shame to waste on something lesser, but it is not one I would hold up as the definitive corrupt-cop film. See it, enjoy it, just keep your expectations pointed in the right direction.
Rating: ★★★½ | Year: 2001 | Watched: 2025-10-11
Trailer
▶ Watch the official trailer for Training Day (2001) on YouTube
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
Stream: Amazon Prime Video · Amazon Prime Video with Ads
Rent: Apple TV Store · Rakuten TV · Amazon Video · Google Play Movies
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Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi
Watch in the US
Stream: Starz Apple TV Channel
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Physical: Amazon US
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Related on Movies With Macca
More from Antoine Fuqua: Shooter (2007)
More with Denzel Washington: Virtuosity (1995)
More from the 2000s: Kirikou and the Wild Beasts (2005) · Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004) · Daredevil (2003) · Apocalypto (2006)
More action: A Better Tomorrow (1986) · The General (1926) · Hand of Death (1976) · Daredevil (2003)
More crime: A Better Tomorrow (1986) · Angst (1983) · Stolen Face (1952) · Cairo Station (1958)
