Two excellent performances, one from Denzel Washington and the other from Ethan Hawke, heighten Antoine Fuqua's new police thriller Training Day. They raise the film above the clichéd mechanics the production succumbs to in its crucial third act to make for an entertaining commercial effort.

Jake Hoyt (Hawke) is an ambitious but naïve upstart of a California police officer. He's ready to throw himself into a new assignment: joining a task force combating the reign of drug dealers on the streets of Los Angeles. That force is led by 13-year veteran Detective Alonzo Harris (Washington), who gives Hoyt just one day on the job to prove if he is capable of being part of Harris' team.

Jake's "training day" is hardly a routine one. For starters, Alonzo has the young cop partaking in drugs and alcohol as part of his "getting to know the streets" (if only every job had training like this). Harris is apprehensive of the young rookie at first, but he soon begins to realize that Hoyt just might have what it takes to do the job. It is he that Alonzo begins to show Jake more of the daily routine. Routine tasks like using phony search warrants to rip them off suspected drug dealers, paying off city officials and every once in a while, the occasional murder or two when it is in the best interest of Alonzo or the hierarchy. Not surprisingly, Harris and Hoyt's wildly different points of view on law enforcement cause for a lot of tension as the day wears on.

Had that been the entire story, this would have been one of the better police thrillers to come out of Hollywood in quite sometime. Director Antoine Fuqua, whose first two films (The Replacement Killers and Bait) were bad to say the least, shows a far more mature and confident directorial style here. He's dropped the flashy visual overkill and instead has gone for a more subdued approach to the material, allowing the story and the characters to come to the foreground. David Ayer (The Fast and the Furious)'s screenplay offers some interesting food for thought when it comes to the ethical issues that are associated with being a law officer in what is essential a war zone.

When Ayer's screenplay steers away from the moral aspect and allows a bland subplot involving the Russian Mafia to take over the concluding twenty minutes, the film loses a lot of the credibility it had worked very hard to build up. Here, Training Day turns into yet another pedestrian action thriller, filled with gunplay, a ridiculous fistfight and a drawn out, unsatisfying conclusion. I'm not sure if Ayer and Fuqua didn't know how to end the film or if they (and the studio suits at Warner Brothers) felt that the movie didn't have enough clichéd elements to make it financially viable. Either way, the ending is a letdown.

One thing you won't feel cheated by are Denzel Washington and Ethan Hawke's winning performances. Washington plays against his usual heroic screen persona to create a performance much like his character: unpredictable, dangerous and fascinating to watch. Whereas another actor might take the easy route by hamming it up and playing the antagonist with one note, Washington goes the opposite way and delves deeper into Alonzo's psyche. By doing this, we get a better understanding to what he does and why. We may not agree on said actions, but thanks to the character accessibility created by Denzel, we certainly do begin to understand where he is coming from. This performance ranks alongside Glory, Malcolm X and The Hurricane as one of Denzel Washington's finest performances.

Ethan Hawke has starred in some quality productions in the past, but I for one could never get past the pretentious slacker persona he wears like a shirt. Yet, with this film and with the upcoming Tape, he shows that he may be capable of maturing onscreen. His performance, much like Washington's, is very accessible when it comes to empathizing with where Hoyt is coming from. His character doesn't carry a lot of emotional baggage nor does he want to rebel against the world. He wants to protect, serve and make a difference in the community. Hawke captures that idealism very nicely and also manages not to be overshadowed by his co-star, which is a feat unto itself.

The supporting cast, including musical artists Snoop Dogg, Dr. Dre and Macy Gray, is also quite good. Scott Glenn has a small but solid role as a friend of Alonzo's who also is a big-time drug dealer. Tom Berenger appears as one of a city official, but his role and lines of dialogue are far too brief to make any sort of impact.

Being that Fuqua got his start in the music video industry, it comes as no surprise that the film looks and sounds terrific. The cinematography by Mauro Fiore basks Los Angeles in a rich display of deep colors, while Mark Mancia's score is one that is low-key and hypnotic. The use of rap music is surprisingly sparse, but what is there works quite well.

Based on Fuqua's previous movie work, I figured that Training Day would be a loud, hyper kinetic music video with bullets, a high body and cliché count and zero substance. I was, by and large, taken by pleasant surprise. If you can lower your expectations for the contrived ending, you will find an entertaining drama buoyed greatly by its two lead stars. Training Day may not be perfect, but it certainly is worthy of your time and money.

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