Denzel Washington is one of the most celebrated actors of our time is he not? He hasn't gotten too old for people in their teens and twenties to relate to yet has he? Well before he gets too old for you this movie, Training Day, should be a required viewing for anyone who was alive in 2001.

The plot seems usual enough for a cop movie: Jake Hoyt (Ethan Hawke) is assigned to ride along and partner with Alonzo Harris (Denzel Washington) who is a celebrated member of the police force's narcotics unit. Alonzo has some "interesting" methods to his "training" including forcing Jake at gunpoint to smoke some weed that was laced with PCP. Later claiming t hat his hesitation to smoke the drugs could get him killed on the street while working undercover.

If that seems like a strange relationship for the two of them to start out having get ready, because it only gets stranger and more intense from there. Jake figures out relatively early on (therefore not a spoiler) that Alonzo is a corrupt cop that is on the take (accepting bribes.) The other narcotics officers are aware of this because they are also on the take.

Alonzo kind of rules the streets and this is evidenced in the "respect" that he receives from those in the hoods that he is meant to be patrolling. It should come as no surprise that Jake, being a newcomer, isn't exactly entitled to the same level of respect. In one of those interactions we get to see Terry Crews in one of the only serious roles that I have ever seen him involved in.

So what makes this film so great? Probably because the chemistry is there between Ethan and Denzel and the story twists quite a lot so you never really know what is going to happen next.

The ending is a bit implausible and there are tons of holes in the last couple of sequences in the movie but that doesn't take away from the entertainment value of the rest of it. Is this movie perfect? No, but it is about as close to it as an action oriented cop movie is going to get.