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Training Day [2001]

Gaith

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Spoilers herein! :)

Just saw it for the first time. A pretty good movie, but the formulaic martyrdom-by-gunfire finale left a bad taste in my mouth - up until then, it's pretty much all character, thoughts, mind games... and ends with the antihero's guts spilling out.

Hitchcock would have known how to end it. We started with Ethan Hawke's character, and stayed with him the whole movie, so to show Denzel's death - which Hawke isn't anywhere near - is a fundamental error, a betrayal of the whole narrative angle of the film. It should have ended with Hawke walking away from Denzel and the thugs surrounding him. "Hoyt! Hoyt!" Denzel yells. Keep on Hawke walking. Cut to black. A gunshot. In his driveway, Hawke gets out of Denzel's car, and walks into his house. (This would be similar in ways to the Notorious finale, except with the good guy walking home.)

Since this would only subtract two or three minutes of film time, I'm not sure a fan edit, which could also trim some of the over-the-top Hawke-vs.-Denzel fistfight, would be sufficiently unlike the original to qualify as a True fan edit - more of a custom dvd. But it would certainly be feasible, and one of the gang-bangers shooting Denzel is more plausible, IMO, than all those tens of people just walking away from an incredibly tense encounter with a charismatic guy who's just been shot in the ass. Either way, it'll be a long while before I feel like watching it again. Maybe never. But I did enjoy most of it while it lasted.
 
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