10 Best Neo-Noir Movies Of The 21st Century

At the risk of shrugging popular opinion, Training Day might be a relatively mediocre offering from David Ayer without the powerhouse performance of Denzel Washington.

Denzel hoists this movie onto his shoulders and carries it all the way through the muck and melee, triumphantly tossing it across the finish line with a cigarette hanging out of his crooked smile. He plays the villain with such ferocity that it's understandable for some viewers to be genuinely afraid of him the whole time. He's that powerful. He's that good.

Strictly as a genre film, Training Day doesn't navigate the gut-wrenching twists and turbulent turns with grace, but rather with a twisted persistence that forces audiences to dry swallow one extremely unsettling pill. Condensing the action into one 24-hour period helps keep the tension right at the surface.

That brashness is exciting, no doubt, but it's a good thing Ethan Hawke is there to balance it all out with a more innocent perspective.

The film would fall flat without a less-volatile counterpart to all the madness and moral deviousness. Hawke fills that role with aplomb, and lets us savor Denzel's outrageously good performance all the while.