BEFORE: Sticking in Los Angeles for this film that won Denzel Washington a Best Actor Oscar - so expectations are high.
THE PLOT: On his first day on the job as a narcotics officer, a rookie cop works with a rogue detective who isn't what he appears to be.
AFTER: Well, after playing cops that were falsely accused of all kinds of things this week, Denzel finally plays an actual dirty cop. See, if you wanted an Oscar, that's all you had to do... I think he probably got the nomination and the award because the character is so complex. Easy Rawlins and the "Mighty" Xavier Quinn are pretty one-note, by comparison.
The movie follows the first day of rookie police officer Jake Hoyt (Ethan Hawke) on the undercover narcotics beat, who is under the supervision of Det. Alonzo Harris (Denzel Washington). But Hoyt (and the viewer) quickly learns that this is not your typical beat-cop situation, when Alonzo forces Hoyt to smoke some weed after a drug bust. He explains that a narcotics cop might find himself in situations where he has to sample the product, or at least be familiar with it, and in a weird way, this almost makes sense. Hoyt is at first worried about failing drug tests, but Alonzo says that exceptions are made for undercover cops - which again, seems to make some kind of backwards sense.
But as the day wears on, we see that Alonzo is engaged in all manner of illicit activities - payoffs, illegal searches, excessive violence against suspects - and all that's before lunch! He seems to have an answer for it all, explaining that the world of narcotics is not all black and white, and that complicated steps have to be taken to reach the upper levels of the drug trade. He's almost charming enough to make Hoyt (and the audience) believe him. I'm sure working an undercover beat is more complicated than my job, but I'd like to think it's a little more cut-and-dry than this.
My bone of contention comes with the ending - after explaining for most of the film how complicated the narcotics beat is, in the end it turns out to be pretty simple - black hat vs. white hat, dirty cop vs. honest cop, good vs. evil. Were we right in the first place, thinking that it's easy to tell right from wrong? Or did someone write a complicated screenplay and find themselves unable to come up with a nuanced ending?
And about that black vs. white stuff - the evil cop is African-American, and the noble rookie cop is Caucasian. Is that maybe a little simplistic, or even racist? It's a little hard to get a read on what exactly the message of the film is, with so many ethical lines crossed during the course of the film. Is it OK for the cops to break rules in order to collar crooks? There's an essay question...
Also starring Eva Mendes (last seen in "Out of Time"), Scott Glenn (last seen in "The Right Stuff"), Cliff Curtis (last seen in "10,000 B.C.") with cameos from Tom Berenger, Harris Yulin (last seen in "The Hurricane", also with Denzel), Snoop Dogg (last seen in "Starsky & Hutch), Dr. Dre and Macy Gray.
RATING: 7 out of 10 bullet holes
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