What could be more ominous than a movie about a black cop and a white cop? All the combinations are worn too smooth to move anymore, from streety-mouth kid Eddie and stinky old Nolte to madcap Mel and wise old Glover. As for the chronic theme of cop realpolitik and consequent corruption, stop it! Bored now! Plus, today's cop movies are lousy with hard-shelled softies who attain grudging racial rapprochement in the heat of the night prowl of gangbangerland. Most cop-movie makers should be turned over to the authorities.

So my hopes were low for Training Day, noted music video director Antoine Fuqua's flick about a Dirty Old Pragmatist, Alonzo (Denzel Washington), showing a Dewy Rookie, Jake (Ethan Hawke), the bloody LAPD ropes. But instantly, Denzel won me over. Nasty in black from his thug cap to his victim-stomper boots, he manages a better evil makeover than I could have imagined.

The odor of sanctity has clung too much to this man. He's forever playing upright symbols in do-good dramas: Biko, Malcolm X, white-coated docs, white-collar lawyers, black righters of wrong. When he's a rebel, it's for a cause: a submarine hero defying a warmonger commander, a Gulf War hero ashamed of his medal, a Civil War hero demanding dignity. His films' titles tell the story: Courage Under Fire, Cry Freedom, Glory. And he's preposterously perfect; when Newsweek needed an actor whose ideal facial symmetry illustrated the science of human beauty, Denzel was their man. He wouldn't boost his career by doing the blockbuster Seven: It seemed "evil" to him. His Oscar might as well have been for Best Moral Actor--in fact, they should make all the Oscar statues in his image. They would seem more purely gold.

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