GOOD FILM, BAD COP

Denzel Is Arresting In 'Training Day'

"Training Day," a drama directed by Antoine Fuqua, stars Denzel Washington
as a murderous rogue cop. He's Alonzo Harris, a Los Angeles narcotics
detective who dispenses rough justice with an iron fist inside a steel
glove. Ethan Hawke co-stars as an idealistic rookie, Jake Hoyt. All of the
abundant action is squeezed, improbably, into Jake's first day as Alonzo's
new partner. Sometime around mid-morning comes a moment when the cynical
veteran knows that he's got the overawed rookie firmly in his clutches. "I
will do anything you want to do," Jake declares. Grinning like a Cheshire
tiger, Alonzo purrs contentedly: "My nigger." For the first time in his
career Mr. Washington plays a thoroughly bad guy, and the results are
remarkable to behold. "It's all good," Alonzo likes to say in a jaunty
mantra of reassurance; everything's cool, everything's under control. Well,
several stretches of the movie aren't all that good -- "Training Day" can
be simplistic, formulaic and absurdly melodramatic -- but Mr. Washington is
flat-out great.

His expansive narc makes evil alluring, and thus instructive; it's worth a
reminder at any time, though especially now, that the worst villains can be
gifted seducers. Alonzo Harris is a man of formidable charm and, thanks to
the script's darkly sparkling dialogue, compelling eloquence. Working the
streets of the inner city in a one-man war on drugs, he works over anyone
who stands in his way, more often than not for the nasty fun of it; so what
if the search warrant in his hand is actually a takeout menu from a Chinese
restaurant. Alonzo, who drives a bestrutted 1978 Monte Carlo low rider, is
so alluring that we, just like earnest Jake, keep trying to see him as a
slightly errant knight of honor long after he has proved to be a
self-deluding monster.

The screenwriter, David Ayer, grew up in the same troubled area of South
Central Los Angeles. We're told that he started writing his script in 1995,
well before the city was shaken by revelations of systemic police
corruption and flagrant abuse. Those revelations give the film a special
sense of authenticity, and probably emboldened the filmmakers to go even
further with their memorable depiction of a cop completely unfettered by
the law. (The director, Mr. Fuqua, also came out of a tough neighborhood,
in Pittsburgh.)

Unfortunately "Training Day" won't settle for gritty reality. The movie
wants to bump its antihero up in rank, from dirty to diabolical to
maniacal. After a tense morning gives way to an extremely eventful
afternoon, Alonzo tells Jake, suddenly sounding for all the world like
Lucifer: "I can give you keys to all the doors." Then, during a wild night,
he becomes a mythic madman -- Lucifer promoted to King Lear -- and Jake
morphs into the only adversary who can take his crazed partner on, an
almost superhuman, if notably small-boned, moral avenger. (Though Mr.
Hawke's role is inevitably overshadowed by that of his co-star, he plays it
for all it's worth, which turns out to be a lot.)

It's too bad that "Training Day," shot stylishly by Mauro Fiore, has
succumbed to so many temptations of the good-cop-bad-cop genre (an
effective example of which is "Internal Affairs," with Richard Gere as a
surrogate Iago opposite Andy Garcia's Othello). Still, it's an exciting
film with its own distinction. Mr. Fuqua has come a long way, not just from
Pittsburgh or his career in commercials and music videos but from his
overheated debut feature, "The Replacement Killers." Here he's in full and
impressive command of a cast that includes Scott Glenn, Tom Berenger, Cliff
Curtis, Dr. Dre, Macy Gray and Snoop Dogg. As for Denzel Washington, who
won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his 1989 role as a runaway slave
in "Glory," he may not have nailed this year's Best Actor award quite yet
- -- three months and several promising films with big roles lie ahead. So
far, though, it's the performance of the year. He has long been an actor
with all the keys. This time he has opened all the doors.

'Joy Ride'

You won't find much joy in the ironically titled "Joy Ride," but there's
plenty of scary pleasure to be had from this clever, compact thriller,
which was directed by John Dahl. (He did the modestly scaled but memorable
"Red Rock West" and "The Last Seduction.") It's a cautionary tale of
unintended consequences: Do not try what two heedless brothers decide to do
at the start of a long drive across several barren Western states in a
beat-up old Chrysler Newport -- which is play a smarmy practical joke on a
trucker, who in this case evinces an unquenchable appetite for ghastly revenge.

One of the brothers, Lewis (Paul Walker), is a college freshman; he's
ostensibly upstanding, though, as it turns out, easily led. With summer
vacation at hand, Lewis plans a romantic cross-country trip with a lovely
girl named Venna (Leelee Sobieski). Before he picks Venna up, however, he
makes a state-wide detour to bail his older, incorrigible brother out of a
Utah jail. The brother, Fuller, is played by that uncrowned king of comical
screw-ups, Steve Zahn. In "Joy Ride" Mr. Zahn doesn't work at comedy so
much as at deep-dyed perversity. If there's trouble to explore, Fuller will
head straight for it, since he lacks any vestige of a conscience that might
guide him away. ("Just remind yourself," he tells Lewis by way of
justifying his zest for malice, "that in a hundred years you're gonna be
dead.")

I won't tell you how the brothers provoke the trucker's wrath, or what
lurid and often illogical consequences come down on them -- and also on
poor, unsuspecting Venna, who trusts them both. (The only way the plot
makes sense is if the trucker, who uses the CB handle Rusty Nail, is
telepathic.) Suffice it to say that the writers, Clay Tarver and J.J.
Abrams, have borrowed liberally and effectively from "Duel," Steven
Spielberg's celebrated TV movie, made in 1971, in which an 18-wheeler and
its unseen driver become instruments of terror. (The voice of the
all-but-invisible driver is that of Ted Levine, who was the fiendish
Buffalo Bill in "Silence of the Lambs.") The writers have also pilfered
cheerfully from Jonathan Demme's deft comedy of the same year, "Handle With
Care," also known as "Citizens Band." CB radios, Fuller explains after
buying one, are "like a prehistoric Internet."

'Serendipity'

John Cusack's Jonathan and Kate Beckinsale's Sara meet cute in
Bloomingdale's at the start of "Serendipity," an odd though often endearing
romantic trifle that was directed by Peter Chelsom from a script by Marc
Klein. Jonathan wants Sara's phone number, as well he might; I don't know
who could resist Ms. Beckinsale, but it isn't him, or me. Sara, however,
wants to put this nascent love affair to the test of destiny. If the
universe brings the right things back to them -- a cashmere glove, a
handwritten note on a five-dollar bill, a phone number on the flyleaf of a
used copy of "Love in the Time of Cholera" -- then they really are the
soulmates we already know they are.

Sara's tactics struck me as more neurotic than romantic, but they do give
the universe a chance to come through, and to show how very friendly it can
be. (Yes, there's other evidence to the contrary, but this is only a
movie.) They also give Mr. Chelsom, the director of "Funny Bones" and "Hear
My Song," a chance to invent some lively visual comedy, including a bit
with a Dalmatian that gets both lovers tangled in its leash. To enjoy this
movie thoroughly, though, you must buy the notion of coincidence as some
kind of cosmic octopus whose long arms stretch through space and time.
"Serendipity" is "Sliding Doors" with no alternate versions; it's willed
enchantment all the way.

'Diamond Men'

IN recent weeks a small and interesting independent drama called "Diamond
Men" has been opening around the country. Written, produced and directed by
Daniel M. Cohen, it follows two jewelry salesmen on a route through rural
Pennsylvania. The younger man, Bobby, is played by Donnie Wahlberg, and the
older one, Eddie, by Robert Forster. They've been thrown together because
Eddie, a 30-year veteran of the road, became uninsurable after suffering a
heart attack; the only way he can continue to work is by breaking in his
own replacement.

I'll resist the temptation to dwell on "Diamond Men" as a you-know-what in
the rough, even though the script is flawed by a sexual subplot involving a
massage parlor and a former prostitute who has turned to Buddhism. This
film is extraordinary on several counts: its knowledge of an arcane trade
(Mr. Cohen ran his family's diamond business after his father died); its
fondness for telling good life stories; and, above all, its superb starring
performance. Mr. Forster doesn't flinch from making Eddie forlorn, but his
diamond man is brave and touching too. Well before a contrived surprise
ending, in a story that had threatened to recycle "Death of a Salesman,"
Eddie rediscovers life.

* VIDEO TIP: If we're giving out Oscars to Denzel Washington, let's include
a belated one for his performance in "Devil in a Blue Dress" (1995), which
was based on the novel by Walter Mosley, and was directed, elegantly, by
Carl Franklin. The year is 1948, the place is, again, Los Angeles, and Mr.
Washington, as the self-taught private eye Easy Rawlins, is looking for a
mysterious beauty named Daphne Monet.