items tagged with Training Day

TRAINING DAY

In Training Day, Denzel Washington plays a character so far against type – a ruthless, volatile inner-city detective who just might be a sociopath – that the movie’s opening 30 minutes give you a bit of a charge; you’re willing to give this umpteenth good-cop/bad-cop tale the benefit of the doubt for the chance to see Washington showboat in a larger-than-life villain role.

STARTUP.COM, WIT, and 61*

I had the good fortune to view three sensational 2001 releases last week, but as you might imagine, none of them is playing at your local movie theatre. The Warner Bros. and Touchstone studios showed welcome tact by delaying the premieres of Training Day and Big Trouble, initially scheduled for release on September 21, in light of the tragic events of September 11; apparently, both films feature subplots that, in our current national climate, might be inappropriate for mass consumption. (One of the plotlines in Big Trouble, for example, deals with the impending detonation of a nuclear device.) Good for Hollywood, I say, and I hope they feel free to forever shelve any movie where explosions could legitimately be billed as featured characters. Will any of us feel the desire to watch the destructive, slow-motion set-pieces in something like Die Hard or Independence Day ever again? Should we ever have wanted to in the first place?