Training Day
This was my first time seeing Training Day I thought it was an entertaining movie with an ending that I was never expecting. This was a type of buddy relationship that is completely different from what we have looked at so far. We are introduced to two cops, the black cop Alonzo and the white cop, Jake. Alonzo a narcotics officer with the LAPD, Jake is the rookie cop who had come to work with Alonzo to find out if he has what it takes to deal with ruthless drug dealers who run the streets. The two men are much different types of cops. Jake wants to save people and help make the place where they live better by getting the bad guys off the street. Alonzo sees this passion in Jake, but he believes that Jake needs to become more acquainted with the streets like he is, which can mean killing innocent people, or letting others go. Jake soon learns that Alonzo is actually immoral and uses the system of being a police officer to get away with things, like killing one of his best friends for money.
Jake ends up getting completely used by Alonzo in a dangerous deal and Jake would have been killed if it wasn’t for a good deed he completed. This is the first time when we see the buddies turn against each other, to the point where they are ready to kill each other. Jake is our moral hero and reveals to everyone how wrong Alonzo is. In the end Jake doesn’t need to kill Alonzo because he finds that the people on the street are on his side. In the end Alonzo is brutally murdered by the Russians because of the corruption that he has gotten himself into. Is this a true buddy flick if the two don’t end up bonding at all?
posted by Emily Wilson at 7:51 PM
4 Comments:
An excellent question and one that Danielle asks below.
Is this a buddy flick? Or is this something different?
Truly, it is a bi-racial cop film, but buddies?
The question you posed Danielle is up to debate. I personally thought that this is another version of a buddy cop film because it contained most of the proper elements. However in this particular movie the main difference was that the cop that we have normally been identifying as the good cop (the older black cop) became the corrupt one. Because Washingtons character never had his partners back and was willing to have him accused of stealing some of the gang members money one could take the position that its not a buddy cop movie...because there was definitly no buddy--buddy relationship between Hawkes and Washingtons characters
I agree with you on what you said about this being the first time we see the "buddyies" turn on each other, it definitely adds a new twist on things. I also agree with your question of whether it is a buddy film if they don't bond at all. I think they did start to bond a little bit in the middle of the movie, however, that definitely takes a turn ofr the worse. I don't think it is a buddy movie because of how it ended, it did have alot of buddy film elelments, but the ending made it to where i cant call it a buddy movie, buddies would not try to kill each other.
Training Day was very different from the other buddy cop movies we have watched. Emily asks a good question because what exactly makes a buddy cop film a buddy cop film? Do the officers have to actually like one another and get along or can they just be partners whether they like each other or not? I’m not sure what the answer is but I don’t think this was a buddy cop film because the movie was more focused on the characters as individuals then the men as a team.
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