'TRAINING DAY' ASPIRES TO ETHICS LESSON UNTIL WASHINGTON STEALS SHOW

Training Day

The message is muddled, but Denzel Washington's fiery performance comes
through loud and clear.

Rated R for strong brutal violence, pervasive language, drug content and
brief nudity; 120 minutes. Opening today everywhere.

It's not easy to define what "Training Day" is without spoiling things for
the moviegoer.

Let's start with what it is not -- what Warner Bros.' marketing department
is making the movie out to be -- which is a character drama about two cops,
a jaded veteran played by Denzel Washington and an idealistic rookie played
by Ethan Hawke, dealing with the slippery slope of police corruption.

That's how things start, as Hawke's Jake Hoyt meets and rides along with
Washington's Alonzo Harris, an L.A.P.D. narcotics detective showing Hoyt
the ins and outs of undercover drug investigations. It's a baptism by fire
for the new cop, as Hoyt witnesses a drug bust, stops an attempted rape and
- -- prodded by Harris, as a test of Hoyt's machismo and ability to blend in
- -- smokes a joint of PCP-tinged marijuana. Hoyt also meets Harris' squad
(one played by rapper Dr. Dre) and their contacts, like the semi-retired
dealer played by Scott Glenn.

By the movie's midpoint, screenwriter David Ayer ("U-571," "The Fast and
the Furious") has settled the question of who is corrupt and who is not. By
then, "Training Day" has become a different movie, though not necessarily a
better one.

It's no longer a two-man battle, though Hawke -- usually cast as a young
man still growing up ("Hamlet," "Reality Bites," "Snow Falling on Cedars")
- -- is explosive in his first fully adult role. No, the movie is now an
intriguing character study that shows Harris as a fallen hero, a cop so far
into the pit of corruption and twisted ethics that he can no longer tell
the difference between justice and justification.

Harris is a throwback to those old Warner Bros. gangster movies of the '30s
and '40s, like James Cagney in "White Heat" or Edward G. Robinson in
"Little Caesar." In other words, it's a role for which lesser actors would
sell a kidney just to take a crack at, and Washington -- ranging from
smooth and seductive to righteously angry -- bites into it like a dog going
after a pork chop.

Washington's performance is so good, in fact, that it may temporarily blind
you from seeing that the movie has obscured its message. Whatever point the
movie meant to make -- about street life, the War on Drugs or the
corruption of power -- is drowned out by Washington's fulminations, the
musician cameos (Macy Gray, Snoop Dogg) and the washed-out urban landscapes
of director Antoine Fuqua ("Bait," "The Replacement Killers").

"Training Day" wants to teach a lesson about life in L.A.'s mean streets.
What the filmmakers stress, and what the audience will remember, is not the
lesson but how Denzel Washington takes them all to school.