Training Day · reception & legacy
2001 · Antoine Fuqua
How Training Day has been received, argued over, and remembered.
The arc
A solid hit in 2001 with reviews that praised the acting more than the movie, it's since been fully canonised — now routinely called one of the great cop films, with Denzel's Alonzo ranked among the all-time screen villains.
What's debated
The perennial fan debate: was Denzel's Oscar for this a genuine win or a career make-up award for Malcolm X and The Hurricane — and did he take it from Russell Crowe in A Beautiful Mind?
Its footprint
"King Kong ain't got shit on me!" is one of the most quoted, memed and parodied line-readings of the 2000s, and Alonzo's black-leather swagger remains shorthand for the charismatic corrupt cop.
Where it stands
A 'you must have seen this' entry in the modern cop-movie canon, kept alive on Letterboxd almost single-handedly by the gravitational pull of Denzel's performance.