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Denzel Washington’s character in Training Day is a very angry villain counterpart to a fired cop who goes on a spree of arson theft, and murder in Out of Time. To understand why he acts this way, it is important to take a deeper look into his backstory and character. Washington’s character is facing a bitter divorce while he is having an affair with his ex-wife’s high school lover, and is married to an abusive man. It is no wonder he spirals and ends up committing the aforementioned crimes as they’re often overlooked.
Washington has shown us time and time again to justify his unsympathetic actions through a complex web of emotions ranging from pity to anger. And while I don’t condone spiraling to that extent it is understandable to sympathize with him when he gets caught in a web of his own making. The person who ends up solving the case of the murder is his estranged spouse who is a detective. Undoubtedly, she has a biased view, but one that makes more sense than he is left in jail while she is free. This also emphasizes that both sides of the debate can’t be trusted completely for differing reasons.
In Washington, he plays the role of Matt Lee Whitlock, who serves as the sheriff in the peaceful town of Banyan Key, Florida. Things there are quiet and rarely go out of hand. He remains friendly with Detective Alexandra Cole (Eva Mendes), although their marriage has been staled, and they seem to be separating. This allows him to spend time on a passionate affair with Ann Harrison (Sanaa Lathan) who is married to a violent and jealous man Chris (Dean Cain). She is having an affair with him and puts Matt’s life in danger. Matt dodges Chris’s grasp just in time and this is the first of many escapes in a plot that delightfully heaps on contrivances.
Many key pieces of information which I will omit, give away the greatest thrills of the movie (what I described is the setup, before Matt’s issues really get problematic). The movie has the spirit of those crazily overplotted crime films from the 1940s, like ‘The Big Clock’ (1948). Every piece of circumstantial evidence puts the blame on Matt. In the words of Hitchcock, he described this as the innocent man wrongly accused yet, the twist is, Matt isn’t entirely innocent. For one, he did, in fact, steal the money.
Carl Franklin, who directed One False Move and worked with Washington in 1995’s Devil in a Blue Dress, is openly attempting to manipulate the audience beyond the acceptable fear point. At first, the scenes seem to make sense, but the moment Matt is dangling from a hotel balcony or hiding incriminating phone records, there is more attention on the plot than on the characters. As is compulsory in any thriller, disbelief needs to be suspended, but in this case, it needs to be suspended in bulk. I am not looking for realism in a movie like Out Of Time I am looking for the stylish touch given to it through genre.
Washington’s charm serves him well in his different roles, enabling him to deliver characters in an empathetic light which makes it hard for us to blame him. Mendes creates an ex-wife Alex who is oddly forgiving and shows little anger towards Matt for his infidelities and seems very fond of him still. What if, instead, she was really enraged at him? That would’ve created a lot more tension. Ann is portrayed by Saana Latham, who is somewhat believable in multiple ways at different speeds, which makes her an easier character to play albeit a little more complicated as the story progresses. Dean Cain is the epitome of the odious man as the abusive husband. John Billingsley plays Chae who works as the local coroner and happens to be Matt’s comic relief sidekick and does a wonderful job in defending Matt out of some really sticky situations.
The state’s feature in one of the film’s star lists is crucial, and it does capture a few glimpses of it. It was filmed in and around Miami, Boca Grande, and Cortez, which reminds me of how many Hollywood crime movies rely on the tender streets of Los Angeles, or even Toronto. At Banyon Key, people seem to actually reside, where everyone knows everyone and high school romances can still smolder. The more evidence the set collects around the sheriff, the more obstructive it tends to become because he has few places to hide and there are few people who do not know him.
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