In
Training Day, Jake Hoyt (played by Ethan Hawke)
is a rookie cop assigned to an experienced undercover narcotics
detective, Alonzo Harris (played by Denzil Washington), whose
efforts account for 15,000 man-years in sentences over a thirteen-year
career. At 5 A.M., Hoyt is awakened by an alarm, and his wife
Lisa (played by Charlotte Ayanna) prepares breakfast. Soon,
Harris calls to tell him to report to a skid row diner in
downtown Los Angeles at 10 A.M. Nervous about the exciting
new assignment, which can meet a big promotion, Lisa encourages
him and sends him on his way for a twenty-four hour trial
as Harris’s buddy. When he arrives, Harris works him
over verbally; after a spin in his car, he has browbeat Caucasian
Hoyt into becoming his "nigger," ready to do whatever
he is told by African American Harris. What the eager-to-please
rookie does not know is that Harris is planning an elaborate
scam in which Hoyt will do the dirty work. Harris lost a million
in Las Vegas, and the Russian Mafia wants either the dough
or his life. Harris knows where to get $6 million--beneath
the floorboards of the house of his former partner, retired
cop Roger (played by Scott Glenn). But before pulling off
the scam, Harris breaks Hoyt into the realities of being a
"wolf" preying on "sheep" by terrorizing
petty drug users to get them to stop their habit and by extorting
information and money from retail drug pushers in order to
locate the wholesalers. Hoyt is shocked that Harris is so
brazenly brutal, and his shock later turns to disloyalty when
he fails to follow Harris’s script in the $6-million
heist. Harris then arranges to kill Hoyt, but he is spared
when the intended assassin learns that Hoyt earlier that day
saved his fourteen-year-old niece from being raped. Hoyt then
goes to Harris’s apartment for revenge, humbles Harris
in front of an African American neighborhood community, and
walks off with $2 million, thereby leaving Harris to his fate.
Originally scheduled for release in September but delayed
in the wake of the tragic events of September 11 in New York
and Washington, D.C., several themes pervade Training
Day, directed by Antoine Fuqua. The main point appears
to be that police academy rules may not apply to the war against
drugs. The distinction between retail and wholesale drug traffic
stands out, setting forth the hypothesis that police terror
of retail drug addicts and pushers may be more effective in
stopping the traffic than imprisonment. Armed with a gun and
superior muscle, police can indeed be bullies, but the result
may be to create civilian bullies who band together for self-defense,
an explanation for the rise of street gangs. Among homeboys
who attended the film on opening night, the best parts are
indeed the macho displays of raw power; such an audience reaction
will prompt those from the better parts of town to recoil
in fear of ever setting foot in the poorer parts of town.
MH
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