Training Day is not just soulful, it's organic. You can hear it breathing. Long, slow concentrated breathes of polluted air - a slight struggle to fill the lungs, because it's a heavy smoker, with quick confident exhales, snapping the eyes to attention as blood pumps furiously, menacing and red. This is the power of Antoine Fuqua's (The Replacement Killers, a.k.a. Charlie's favorite movie) serious minded morality tale of two Los Angeles cops spending a day together on the gritty streets - one man a hardened know it all veteran, Alonzo (Denzel Washington, explosive like a fire cracker) and the other a first day with all the trimmings rookie, Jake (Ethan Hawke wringing electricity from a part that lesser actors would have missed). Actually, there is a third person riding around in Alonzo's slick black high and mighty mobile getting schooled about what it "really" means and what it "really" takes to clean up the scum and keep the peace – you, the audience, are being trained as well. The movie stares at you disapprovingly, sizes your white ass up, and asks if you're ready. Whatever you answer you're wrong - just get in and shut up-but, keep your eyes open. Watch Alonzo carefully and wonder how much of his rhetoric you believe and still feel comfortable being in the car. Would it be foolish to underestimate him? Glance over at Jake and think what must be going through his head, and don't sell him short either. Don't let Alonzo catch you clawing at the locks trying to make an early exit, because that will make you appear weak and might just get you killed. At the end of the day you're going to be asked one question: What earned your respect today? The answer will tell you who you are.

It's not like we haven't seen this formula before. Clean, crisp, idealistic babe is partnered with a burn the book, senior officer who enlightens the younger man as to what police work truly is (The Rookie, Point Break). But I can't remember the formula being taken to this crazed level. Alonzo has taken street justice to a higher plateau - to a cosmos and philosophy that revels in its own over the top quality. The man is the most perfect specimen of egomaniacal grandeur. There are only two ways to understand Alonzo: incurably insane or profoundly confused. Either way, Denzel Washington is clearly giving everything he has to this role and the result is a marvel in acting extremism (See Malcolm X for a role where Washington peeked and was robbed of a deserved Oscar win.)

Surprisingly, Hawke does a better job playing the nervous newcomer being beaten, tortured and manipulated into maturity than did Keanu Reeves and Charlie Sheen in their turns at the part (welcome to sarcasm). Hawke's metamorphosis is treated with much sensitivity to his inner struggle and senses of duty, responsibility, and self-preservation (the last of these three being the real heart of the movie). It is almost a Michael Corleone (Al Pacino in The Godfather) type of character , k'vayachol.

Training day is also a cut above the rest because it is sure of itself; It knows what it wants to be, which is a better than average message movie riding the fence between urban realism and pure Hollywood conceptual reality. There is also the benefit of taking in a supporting cast that includes West Coast rap old timers Snoop Dog and Dr. Dre, as well as singer Macy Gray. Maybe you'll also enjoy checking out two men who would have been great in the lead roles of this movie about twenty years ago, Scott Glenn (The Right Stuff) and Tom Berenger (Platoon).

At the end of the day you'll realize that the movie is an excellent form of unsettling entertainment, but entertainment nonetheless. If you don't' take the movie too seriously, and simply follow it’s breathing patterns, inhale it’s every threatening experience, and belt out some exhilarated howls at Alonzo’s twitches, you'll have a good time and perhaps find out what you're made of. Trivia - Ethan Hawke also starred in Great Expectations based on a Charles Dickens classic. The question is why does Charlie think he saw that movie with me, and also, since I never saw that movie, who did he see it with?

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