The iconic scene Denzel Washington improvised for ‘Training Day’
In terms of leading men, Denzel Washington is one of the most charismatic in the business. Although he has played many diverse roles throughout his career, Washington’s strong suit has always been about playing strong masculine characters that are always in tune with doing what’s right no matter the cost. It’s easy to get typecast in that character, though, making Washington’s sudden turn in Training Day all the more enjoyable.
As the movie begins, it looks as though Washington’s Alonzo Harris will be yet another role model for Ethan Hawke’s Jake Hoyt. After meeting over coffee, Alonzo shows Jake around the mean streets of California and how a police officer should address situations regarding narcotics and organised crime.
Once the movie picks up steam, it becomes abundantly clear that Harris is the true villain of the story, being a crooked cop who uses his authority like a drug, threatening to get these bad neighbourhoods into serious trouble and even killing people who stand in the way of him getting rich. Towards the end of the film, though, Jake has earned the town’s trust, resulting in no one being afraid of Harris’s threatening words.
In one last attempt to assert his dominance, Harris goes a long monologue ending with “King Kong ain’t got shit one me”. Despite how perfect the line was for the moment, it didn’t make it into the original script. When speaking to Vanity Fair about the iconic scene, director Antoine Fuqua remembered Washington coming up with the one-liner on the spot, recalling, “The King Kong moment came out of Denzel. I remember that moment because we were doing the scene, and he just started going off. I remember looking at the cameraman and saying, ‘I hope you got that because I don’t think we’re going to get that again’”.
Even though Harris might claim to own the streets that he monitors, his attempts to get the dirty money from Hoyt are all in vain, leading to him getting gunned down in the street a few scenes later after being unable to pay the money back to some of his associates.
Although the movie succeeded at the box office, it wasn’t until a few months after it came out that Fuqua remembered touching people’s hearts. The director said that Hawke especially got a whole new fanbase overnight, continuing, “Ethan was in Harlem doing something one day and called me and said, ‘Wow, I’ve got a whole new audience. All these people came up to me.’ You just set out to make a good movie, and somehow it became a cultural thing”.
In a world that was dominated by organised crime going on by law enforcement, Hawke was the one cop who wanted to do some good. While Hawke’s portrayal may have driven the film, Washington’s masterful depiction of corrupt cops became one of his biggest roles, even earning him an Oscar that year for ‘Best Supporting Actor’. When watching that improvised monologue, no one is seeing Washington. This scene depicts a man driven by greed and power clawing at any ounce of control he has left.
