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  Directed by
  Starring
  Specs
  • Widescreen 2.35:1
  • 16:9 Enhanced
  • Dual Layer (RSDL 57.09)
  Languages
  • English: Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround
  Subtitles
    English - Hearing Impaired
  Extras
  • Deleted scenes
  • Theatrical trailer
  • Audio commentary - Antoine Fuqua
  • 2 Music video
  • DVD-ROM features - Interactual Player
  • Awards/Nominations
  • Web access
  • Outtakes - Alternate Ending
  • 3 Filmographies

Training Day

Warner Bros./Roadshow Entertainment . R4 . COLOR . 118 mins . MA15+ . PAL

  Feature
Contract

One of the staples of mainstream movies for the past eternity has been the cop buddy movie. Two cops, who at the very least wear their different social classes and philosophies on their sleeves and are often from completely different cultures altogether, are thrown together by either fate or “the chief” and hate each other immediately. But they cruise around in their car catching bad guys (with plentiful one-liners, of course) and slowly getting to know each other. After much yelling, practical jokery, a male-bonding-calibre fist fight and a few shared gun battles, they become the closest of friends, the stereotypical “odd couple”. Done well (as in the earlier Lethal Weapon films) it can be hugely entertaining; done half-heartedly, it can be embarrassing to watch.

But the cop buddy movie ran its course; it’s almost as though audiences have grown tired of seeing characters on screen that inevitably end up liking each other. A bit of negativity is in order here. It’s time for the anti-buddy cop movie.

Training Day, the first original screenplay from U-571 and The Fast And The Furious writer David Ayer, was just the kind of anti-buddy experience the world had been waiting for. It’s an intelligent but suitably action-loaded account of a single day in the life of rookie LAPD narcotics cop Jake Hoyt (Ethan Hawke), who’s gotten tired of the mundanity of day-to-day policing and has signed up for the drug squad to do some good, to “get the crap off the streets”. On his first day in his new role, he finds himself assigned to partner a long-serving and much-decorated undercover detective, Alonzo Harris (Denzel Washington). Harris is not a subtle man. An abrupt and often almost threatening man who drives a car that could have been lifted from the set of Shaft, he introduces Hoyt to his own personal method of upholding the law – his own set of rules that he justifies by the need to remain undercover and associate with the scum o’ the earth necessary to make big drug busts happen. Harris has no qualms about menacing drug-buying college kids at gunpoint, chugging beer on the way to the next assignment, hanging out with dubious types socially, helping himself to drugs and money seized as evidence… Harris seems to have no limits, yet his gruffly charming manner makes it all seem more or less reasonable. For a while. Because as Hoyt’s first day drags on, things get more and more out of control – in fact, he is (and we’d like you to assume the voice of The Guy That Does Movie Trailers here) A Good Cop… Having A Baaaaaad Day. And it just keeps getting worse.

It may be underpinned by a somewhat mundane premise, but Training Day manages to avoid the obvious for most of its running time, rising above the level of mere action movie or (anti) buddy yarn thanks to several factors. For starters, Washington (who scored a Best Actor Oscar for his work here) and Hawke are superb, both of them finding new and fascinating ways to explore characters that would otherwise have seemed over-familiar; Washington’s almost always a compelling screen presence but here, playing against type, his Lucifer-like beard seems to give him the license he needs to become Alonzo Harris, rather than merely perform him. It’s a thoroughly convincing performance that manages to be perfectly chilling on more than one occasion. Hawke, always a strong screen presence, feeds off Washington’s characterisation; together they make the relatively rapid time-frame of the story convincing. The single-day scenario is interesting – it recalls Martin Scorsese’s After Hours in its main character’s spiralling loss of control, but does so within a very different genre.

Ayers’ script is excellent – an extremely kinetic and tension-loaded sequence of events and abrupt character development, it barely lets up for a moment, though it does seem a bit lost when it comes time to round off the story in some meaningful way. Helming only his third feature film (after The Replacement Killers and Bait) music video and TV commercial director Antoine Fuqua brings along all the visual style and flair you’d expect from someone with a background in the visual promo field; he also, however, brings a remarkable ability to tightly control the pace and mood of the story, and it’s extremely effective – particularly in the first half of the film. Fuqua never resorts to overt Scott-brothers-style visual showiness, but still manages to make terrific use of the widescreen frame to subtly shift mood and bring a truly visceral feel to the scenes that need it.

Over-familiar the genre may be, but Training Day attempts to take something familiar in a new direction; for the most part it succeeds, though in the hands of lesser talent the very same story could so easily have come out like a bad telemovie. Thank Fuqua that it didn’t.

  Video
Contract

It’s from Roadshow. ‘Nuff said.

Well, not quite – like the local DVD of Don’t Say A Word (another film that was, like Training Day, a co-production between a Warner-related company and Village Roadshow), this disc was almost certainly mastered by the gang at Warner’s WAMO facility, and the unexpected appearance of unadvertised DVD-ROM material on the disc (as well as the Warner-style menu screens) would back up that theory.

Regardless, this is a stellar transfer. Presented at the original theatrical 2.35:1 aspect ratio – and, of course, 16:9 enhanced – the film presentation is flawless from start to finish. Think of a list of all the things that annoy you most about video transfers of film material – and all the things that you’re tired of seeing go wrong when a transfer is compressed for DVD – and then take your list, screw it up and throw it away. Because whatever you wrote down, it doesn’t apply to this disc.

The almost grain-free widescreen image is superbly detailed but never over-enhanced – indeed, it’s almost glistening with fine detail at times, most notably the pattern of water drops on a car window and bonnet during one of the film's early scenes. The higher-than-usual black level during some indoor scenes is intentional, by the way; elsewhere, shadow detail is superb and there’s no shortage of crisp detail even in night sequences.

Forget the idea of MPEG artefacts; you might as well be watching a digital master tape. A superb disc, this is easily reference standard.

A dual-layered DVD, it places a layer change half way through the movie at the 57 minute mark, during a relatively quiet dialogue scene. It’s extremely well placed and quickly negotiated, but still noticeable due to the brief but unavoidable loss of the quiet background audio.

  Audio
Contract

And speaking of reference standard, welcome to one of the finest movie soundtracks for a film of this genre you’re likely to find anywhere. These people know their audio, and have provided a knock-out 5.1 sound experience that isn’t afraid to be quiet and restrained when needed. Throughout the movie there’s plenty of vivid ambient detail in the rear channels – but it’s subtle detail, the way it should be, giving the non-action scenes a level of realism not usually found in modern soundtracks. Dialogue is well controlled and recorded with just enough dynamic range to stay legible at all times but still have audible emotion contribute viscerally to the drama.

When the more action-oriented scenes arrive the soundtrack doesn’t do the obvious thing – the re-recording mixers here don’t simply crank up the master levels and go for the ear-bleed approach. Instead, they mix these scenes with every bit as much realism as the rest of the film, using the five channels and subwoofer extensively to create a truly involving sound-world that’s laden with realistic, sharply defined audio; for example, when a gun is fired into a kitchen area, the resulting sound of shattering glass and crockery is not overplayed, but instead is neatly placed at the appropriate point in the front soundstage at the volume you’d expect from such an event relative to the deafening roar of gunfire. And something else, too – when a character lands a punch on another, the sound team actually DON’T go for the big THWACK sound effect with the WHOOMP emphasis from the sub. They make it sound like a punch actually sounds, and that’s so rare it almost sounds disconcerting at first.

All of the sound effects are this well controlled, seamlessly merging with the dialogue. The frequency response of the soundtrack throughout is terrific; those with high-end speakers will be well pleased, and won’t lose their hearing either – something you can’t say about many modern movie soundtracks.

  Extras
Contract

Not surprisingly, the extras here are identical to those supplied on the region 1 version of the disc, with our version also scoring a couple of the regular Roadshow-supplied bonuses in the form of the Dolby and Press Play trailers.

Audio Commentary: Director Antoine Fuqua, fairly softly spoken but a keen talker, offers his commentary on various story elements and character motivations from his point of view, as well as providing background info about the making of the film itself. It’s an amiable and friendly commentary that perhaps dwells a little too much on the less technical side of filmmaking – surprising, considering that advertising and music video directors usually seem consumed by all things technological! Any doubts as to whether this was edited together in post production, by the way, should be answered by the fact that Fuqua conveniently stops talking for the layer change. Audio on this track is Dolby Digital 2.0 with the Dolby Surround flag set.

Training Day – Crossing The Line: A suitably cheesy title for a typically flaccid 15-minute “making-of” documentary, though it’s always good to see footage of the filmmaking process itself, and there’s more of that here (and less extensive clips from the movie) than in some other featurettes of this kind. Everyone loves each other, of course, though going by Fuqua’s commentary, everyone DID love each other during the making of the movie. A definite highlight: rap guru Dr Dre getting hold of a semi-automatic weapon for a scene and instantly identifying it by make and model! Meanwhile, co-producer Jeffrey Silver offers his wisdom: “I think it’s a morality tale, I think it’s a tale of what one man does when faced with a choice.” Duh.

Additional Scenes: 12 and a half minutes of deleted scenes – or “lifts” as they’re called here – a good deal of which is character embellishment material shot inside Harris’s car. There are some good moments here, but many of these scenes are sluggishly paced and overall the film (which is already fairly long) is better off without them. The movie frame is letterboxed at 2.35:1 but the video is non-anamorphic and the quality is average at best, below VHS standard at times. Audio is mono, encoded as a Dolby 2.0 track.

Alternate Ending: Don’t get too excited. Though this section runs over four and a half minutes, most of the run time is material that’s already in the movie, only in an unfinished form; the actual “alternate” bit is just over a minute and a half and spells things out a bit too much like a Scooby Doo episode to be of any real consequence. Video is non-anamorphic 2.35:1 letterboxed, and is extremely dark and low-quality.

Theatrical Trailer: The movie’s main trailer, presented 16:9-enhanced and 2.35:1 letterboxed, but with only Dolby 2.0 stereo sound. A good solid ad for the movie that nevertheless doesn’t quite try hard enough to rise above the “good cop having a bad daaaaay” scenario we mentioned earlier!

Music Videos: Two promo clips, both with 4:3 video and stereo sound. The songs – by Nelly and Pharoahe Monch – are average, but then, this reviewer really isn’t the person to be asking about this particular genre of music. It seems strange though that bona fide stars Dr Dre, Snoop (Doggy) Dogg and Macy Gray are all in the movie but don’t get a free music video into the bargain. Whether or not these two clips were directed by Fuqua is not stated, but it is possible.

Cast and Crew: As if we hadn’t already figured out this was a Warner-mastered disc, here’s the infamous Warner cast-and-crew screen doing its evil thing. Though seven cast and four crew members are listed (inadequate in itself), the only ones who score actual (“selected”) filmographies are Washington, Hawke, and bit-player Tom Berenger (they must have had the data hanging around for another disc). It’s not as though these screens are tough to do – the bio material already exists, written by the studio themselves! Absolutely pathetic, and quite why it’s at the top of the Special Features list is a mystery.

Roadshow Press Play Trailer: It’s gonna be on every Roadshow disc from now on, isn’t it? Guess so, at least for the time being, so get used to not pressing play (the disc starts up without you doing so, ironically) but rather pressing “menu” to get past this trailer and also conveniently skipping the copyright and rating screens, both of which can only be seen by waiting through the opening ad. Image is 16:9, sound is Dolby Digital 5.1 (for a “one hundred and eighty degree visionary experience,” it says here, making us wonder what happened to the other 180 degrees that accommodates the surround channels).

Dolby Digital Train Trailer: Woohoo! Yes, that’s the sound a train whistle makes on occasion, but it’s also the sound made over here when this particular Dolby trailer started up (and we’re guessing the mastering team were grinning like the punsters they truly are when they chose this particular Dolby trailer to precede Training Day, by the way!) The original and still the best of the “hear how many channels we’ve got now” trailers put out by Dolby, it’s too rarely used. And even better, it’s not the Rain trailer.

DVD-ROM Features: Nothing to see here, folks - but then, the meagre DVD-ROM material included here isn’t even supposed to be on the disc, so this material (powered by the Interactual Player, it includes DVD playback, web site links and a few other things) can be considered a freebie. The disc played fine within the Interactual Player we already had installed from the Star Wars Episode One DVD.

  Overall  
Contract

Regardless of all the attendant post-Oscars hype, Training Day is fundamentally a genre picture that rises above the pack thanks to the level of talent that worked on it. Boasting riveting lead performances and moving along at a cracking pace, the film leaves little time to stop for philosophy– and that doesn’t matter. It might not answer any of society’s questions but, just like classics such as Dog Day Afternoon, it conveys the decline of its main character so well you’ll be able to forgive the slight drop into the realms of cliché towards the end.

Roadshow’s DVD offers the film with reference-quality picture and sound, and though it would have been nice to see more extras (a long, unedited interview with Denzel Washington, Ethan Hawke or director Anton Fuqua would have been a hundred times as valuable as the “featurette” here) many of the bonuses – especially the commentary and deleted scenes – are well worth the effort.


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      And I quote...
    "...a genre picture that rises above the pack thanks to the level of talent that worked on it... reference-quality picture and sound"
    - Anthony Horan
      Review Equipment
    • DVD Player:
          Sony DVP-NS300
    • TV:
          Panasonic - The One
    • Receiver:
          Sony STR-DB870
    • Speakers:
          Klipsch Tangent 500
    • Centre Speaker:
          Panasonic
    • Surrounds:
          Jamo
    • Audio Cables:
          Standard Optical
    • Video Cables:
          Monster s-video
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