**½/**** Image A Sound A Extras B+
starring Denzel Washington, Ethan Hawke, Scott Glenn, Eva Mendes
screenplay by David Ayer
directed by Antoine Fuqua

by Walter Chaw In Antoine Fuqua and Dominic Sena’s race to become David Fincher, Fuqua, with his colour-bleached urban noir Training Day, pulls slightly ahead. Essentially a feature-length version of the Fuqua-helmed video for Coolio’s “Gangsta’s Paradise,” Training Day is dankly lit, grim, and edited with a veteran music-video director’s need for speed (though there are considerably fewer cuts than those found in Fuqua’s previous efforts Bait and The Replacement Killers). So smooth and accomplished is the harsh vérité look of the piece that the sun-drenched streets of Los Angeles are as much a player in the film as its leads. But the striking cinematography, sharp screenplay by David Ayer, and undeniable chemistry between Denzel Washington and Ethan Hawke aren’t enough to disguise that Training Day is one bravura performance away from being the umpteenth rote grizzled vet/greenhorn rookie policier. (With a healthy dash of Casualties of War tossed in for that Captain Bligh/Mr. Christian dynamic.)

**/**** Image B+ Sound B+
starring Gene Hackman, Danny DeVito, Delroy Lindo, Rebecca Pidgeon
written and directed by David Mamet

by Walter Chaw David Mamet the writer repeats himself in tight blobs of verbal noise, awkward turns of phrase, and staccato blasts. Mamet directs movies, I suspect, to preserve every beat of his favourite screenwriter’s (Mamet) careful, layered scripts. How he continues to lure big-name actors and producers to play in his exclusive little quicksand boxes of narrative dysfunction is a mystery. For as distinct as the celebrated playwright’s dialogue is, almost more so is the lamentable instinct to cast his largely talentless wives in pivotal roles (first Lindsay Crouse, now the consistently abominable Rebecca Pidgeon), not neglecting Mamet’s inability to transcend the mannered and under-populated staginess of the theatre in which he belongs.