“From tragedy came a real thirst for justice”: The Denzel Washington movie that changed TV forever
Denzel Washington’s Oscar-winning performance has a complex and ever-evolving legacy, having won his first Academy Award in the ‘Best Supporting Actor’ category for Glory, a Civil War epic about the first all-Black regiment of Union soldiers who fought against the Confederacy.
While Washington’s performance as Trip, the former slave who becomes a war hero, was heralded as a brilliant feat of acting, the film itself has been criticised for being told from the perspective of a white character, played by Matthew Broderick.
It seemed inevitable that he would end up winning a second Oscar, and one in the lead category, and although many felt that he could have won for his role as the titular civil rights hero in Malcolm X, Washington eventually earned the ‘Best Actor’ trophy for his performance in Training Day as the corrupt LAPD officer Alonzo Harris.
Given that Washington had a reputation for playing fair and honourable men, it was shocking to see him play such a ruthless, violent villain, and it wasn’t just game-changing to see him go dark, but it was also unprecedented for a film to depict the police department in a realistic way, given how often cops were portrayed as heroes by the media.
Training Day signified to other creators that there was an interest from audiences in seeing more grounded and honest portrayals of police brutality, which was made evident by The Shield, an FX drama from creator Shawn Ryan, which starred Michael Chiklis as the corrupt LAPD officer Vic Mackey, according to whom, the former helped to get a greenlight for his show.
“Training Day came out in October and exceeded expectations,” Ryan said, “Denzel won an Oscar for it. It made the powers that be feel more comfortable, but from tragedy came a real thirst for justice and a sense of, wherever we have to go, whatever we have to do, we’re going to do it.”
According to Chiklis, the themes that were addressed in Training Day were just as important within the development of The Shield, especially after incidents of police violence in real life, who said, “The thematic question posed by The Shield was always, what are we willing to accept from law enforcement to keep us safe. When we had the phone conversation about whether we were going to go through with this after what happened, Shawn said, ‘I think it becomes even more relevant’.”
The prestige television era is often associated with the rise of HBO and its work on The Sopranos and The Wire, but The Shield proved that networks like FX could also make edgy, exciting projects. It also began with one of the most shocking pilots in television history and ended with a twist in which Mackey is revealed to have killed a fellow officer in cold blood, and as was the case with Alonzo in Training Day, Mackey was immediately established as a true anti-hero who could lash out at any given moment, ensuring that it was impossible to predict what he might do next.
The Shield ended up opening the door for the network to take similar risks on other high-profile drama shows, such as The Americans and Fargo, which were able to deal with similarly complex themes, and the many Emmy-award winners who worked on these FX shows owe a small bit of credit to Washington and Training Day for setting the cycle of inspiration in motion.
