Join Ian & Hermes for our 352nd episode as we climb into Alonzo Harris’s Monte Carlo and discover very quickly that this is absolutely not going to be a normal first day on the job in Antoine Fuqua’s Training Day (2001).
Megs isn’t with us this week — Alonzo told her they were just stopping for a quick drink and she sensibly got out of the car.
Liam was supposed to join us, but somebody mentioned the Russian mob and he has spent the entire week refusing to answer the door.
Kev made it as far as the bathtub scene, quietly put his shoes back on and went home.
This week we discuss:
A film that is incredibly well laid out… until the third act. For most of Training Day, everything feels deliberate, controlled and carefully planted. So what happens when the machinery starts to wobble?
Did Ethan Hawke actually have the harder job? Denzel gets the swagger, menace and fireworks. Hawke has to make earnestness compelling.
The scene Denzel was jealous of. There’s one sequence where even Washington apparently knew Hawke had the better material.
Ian makes one claim about himself very early in the episode. Hermes then spends the rest of the show making absolutely certain he never forgets he said it.
The Training Day that could have been. We look at some of the other actors linked to Alonzo and Jake — and how radically different those versions of the movie might have felt.
Denzel versus Ethan. One actor gets to dominate the room. The other has to survive it.
When does Jake finally understand who Alonzo really is? And how long does Alonzo manage to disguise corruption as education?
Then we hit the third act.
Why doesn’t Alonzo just kill Jake?
Why doesn’t Smiley’s crew kill Jake?
Why doesn’t the neighbourhood kill Alonzo?
And how exactly does Alonzo manage to leave all of that behind just in time to run into the Russians?
The answers may determine whether the ending feels inevitable — or simply convenient.
“King Kong ain’t got shit on me.” Is this Alonzo at his most powerful, or the precise moment we realise he has nothing left?
Washington’s Oscar-winning performance. Is Alonzo one of Denzel’s greatest creations, or simply one of his most entertaining?
And finally, whether Training Day is the Best Film Ever — or a brilliantly constructed thriller whose final act asks us to stop looking quite so closely at the construction.
Massive thanks to Lex Van Den Berghe for the use of Mistake by Luckydog. Catch more from Lex's new band, The Maids of Honor, at https://soundcloud.com/themaidsofhonor
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