Ethan Hawke Once Agreed That This Scene Was the Weakest Part of ‘Training Day’
Actor Ethan Hawke felt that his 2001 film Training Day was unique compared to other movies about cops. But he did feel that one Training Day scene was similar to the types of scenes he’d see in other generic police projects.
What Ethan Hawke considered the weakest part of ‘Training Day’
Hawke asserted that Training Day was unlike his usual films. On the surface, the Antoine Fuqua feature was a film about two police officers investigating and stopping crimes. For the most part, Hawke avoided movies like these up until the Denzel Washington-led film. But Hawke believed that there was a fresh twist to a very familiar premise that made the movie attractive.
“I haven’t done a lot of what you would call genre movies. Training Day is a cop picture, and it’s really hard to make a cop picture that is different and unique and special when you’ve got four cop shows on every night on TV, and about three different cop movies come out,” Hawke once said according to Black Film. “So to make one that’s special, it’s going to rely primarily on the uniqueness of the personalities involved in the story.”
Hawke admired the idea of the film all taking place in one day. He also thought Washington’s character Alonzo Harris added an interesting element to the cop picture that hadn’t been seen before. But he still felt Training Day had to conform to certain tropes of the cop sub-genre.
“Even Training Day, you’ve got to have your gunfight at the end. There are certain things in the cop movie that you just have to have or the audience isn’t going to feel right,” he said.
Hawke agreed that it was the weakest part of the movie. But the gunfight had no bearing on the film’s overall quality.
“Because the rest of it ended up being so strong, it kind of superceded the genre, in a way, I felt,” Hawke said.
Ethan Hawke was offered a lot of cop roles after ‘Training Day’
Training Day marked a bit of a turning point for Hawke’s film career. At the time, Hawke wasn’t sure if the Fuqua feature meant he’d do more cop movies in the future. But Hawke asserted he was open to the possibility.
“I go where the most challenging and interesting material is. In this case, I wanted to do this particular movie. I just hope it doesn’t confirm my worst fears, which is that all you need to do to be a successful male actor is carry a gun,” Hawke once said according to Female.
Still, Hawke’s Training Day role helped attract offers for the types of films that he wasn’t even considered for before.
“I’ve never been asked to play a cop in my life and here they are coming out of the woodwork,” he said.
Since Training Day, Hawke has portrayed quite a few police officers in movies. A few years later Hawke would sign up for the crime drama Brooklyn’s Finest. Assault on Precinct 13 also saw Hawke portraying a police officer again.
Why Ethan Hawke is drawn to cop movies
Speaking with Audible, Hawke recently confided why he’d found himself returning to films about police officers after Training Day.
“I always love police drama when it’s done well because their lives are incredibly dramatic, but they also touch real life. Whereas opposed to superhero movies, they imagine these hyperbolic situations that aren’t reminiscent of what our real life feels like,” he explained.
