Once, in an effort to clarify the complexities of the narcotics beat for his rookie recruit, Alonzo Harris (Denzel Washington) blares, “”It’s not checkers, it’s chess.”” His statement could also refer to “”Training Day,”” a tantalizing chess match waged between morale adversaries claiming to be from the same team.
The pieces on this chessboard, though, are never simply black or white, good or evil, as that would be far too easy. Instead, each piece resembles a shade of gray, and you’re never sure which side of the board they’re trying to conquer. The only point of certainty is that Washington’s Harris is the queen, the dominant piece with the power to change the game with a simple move, or end it with several short, precise strokes.The recruit is LAPD officer Jake Hoyt (Ethan Hawke), a 20-month rookie given the opportunity to audition for Harris’ elite team of plainclothes narcotics officers. Eager to please, Hoyt takes Harris’s words to be gospel, no matter how often they contradict the academy’s training manual. Harris adopts a “”big picture”” approach to crime, choosing not to waste time on petty thugs and relying on rule-bending street justice. He’s aggressive, opinionated, experienced and informed: a bully with a badge that’s so drunk with power he’s hung-over and miserable about it. Only Hoyt, operating on the opposite end of the morality scale, can piece together the fact that Harris might actually be a corrupt cop, though David Ayer’s dubious screenplay leaves the door open to the idea that Harris’ underhanded behavior could all be a test for the green officer. For the first time in his nearly 25-year career, Washington plays the villain, and he approaches the role as he does any, with an unmatched passion and intelligence. Not only does the actor know how his character needs to be perceived, he knows how the entire script needs to be played to maintain the picture’s ambiguity until the last possible second. It’s a credit to Hawke that he not only holds his own but also helps us to sympathize with this rookie by nailing the uncomfortable feeling one gets watching a pigeon being victimized by a tyrant.More surprising than Hawke’s admirable performance is Antoine Fuqua’s inspired direction. Gone is the choppy, over-stylized hack techniques Fuqua relied on in “”The Replacement Killers”” and “”Bait,”” replaced instead with steady camera sweeps and lingering pans that seize the complicated material and hold it still, allowing us a minute to contemplate and digest what we’re being fed. It’s not all kosher, and some scenes reach simplistic conclusions for the good of the plot. But several pieces must be sacrificed over the course of a chess match if checkmate is to be achieved, and the film rights itself after each sporadic misstep.Grade: A-By Sean O’ConnellOct. 5, 2001