2. Denzel Washington - Training Day
Just take a look at that pic and ask yourself, would you mess with that guy? I wouldn't. I doubt very many people would. That guy's not someone we can run to when the day needs saving. That's not an authority figure we can turn to when the situation's gone pear shaped and we desperately need someone to say, "It's okay, calm down, I got this." That guy in the pic slaps us in the face, calls us a little b*tch and makes us sit in the corner while he takes all our beer and drives off with our ladies. Denzel Washington's not supposed to look like that. Denzel Washington's not supposed to be scary. Denzel Washington's supposed to be smiling a smile of self-confident bravado...always. Least that's how it was back before 2001 when Training Day hit the multiplexes. Then he went all mean-muggin' on audiences, grew himself a goatee. Good guys can't have goatees, goatees are evil. Anyone from Star Trek's mirror universe can tell you that. Just one year earlier, Washington had made us all feel so good about ourselves with his turn as a football coach in Remember the Titans. It was inspirational to watch as he united a community by bringing black kids and white kids together under bright lights on the gridiron. Well, I suppose Training Day was also about race relations in a way. Veteran black cop Alonzo Harris takes fresh-faced white cop Jake Hoyt on a ride-along and shows him that race doesn't matter when you're a dirty cop. Of course, Hoyt doesn't want to be a dirty cop, so you can see where the bulk of the film's conflict occurs. Harris also leaves Hoyt to die at the hands of a bunch of gangsters and that pretty much ruins any chance Training Day had of being a buddy-cop film, because stuff like that can simply destroy a partnership. I don't know that from experience, but it just seems like something that would be very difficult for a person to get over with a handshake and an apology. Washington won an Oscar for Best Actor that year. His goatee lost Best Supporting Actor to Jim Broadbent.