“Do you want to go to jail, or do you want to go home?”(Training Day). Can you imagine being asked this question? It is rather obvious what the answer should be: You want to go home. Well, this is just one of the memorable quotes from the academy award winning movie Training Day, written by David Ayer and directed by Antoine Fuqua. Training Day is about a veteran police officer (Alonzo) who is training a rookie police officer (Jake). Jake accompanies Alonzo on a twenty-four-hour tour of duty, patrolling the tough streets of Los Angeles. Alonzo tries showing him tactics and strategies to become a good narcotics officer. The director Fuqua attempts to show the most authentic environment possible by filming on the streets of the Los Angeles gangs. Fuqua informs his audience about the journeys of narcotics officers through gang-infested neighborhoods by using realistic portrays of characters, actual gang members, and their environment.
In Training Day, the rookie officer, Jake, does not know what the veteran officer, Alonzo, has in store for him during his twenty-four-hour-training period. For the twenty-four-hour duration, Alonzo tries to teach Jake the strategies of being a narcotics officer (nark). This is so that Jake can eventually become a nark and join the narcotics team. Jake is willing to learn but realizes Alonzo’s tactics and strategies are different from what he thought. Jake wants to protect and serve, locking up the criminals, but Alonzo wants to be a crooked officer. Alonzo puts Jake in numerous situations where he has to think under pressure. He convinces Jake to do drugs while on the job. After Jake is under the influence from the drugs he sees a teenage girl getting raped in alley. He jumps out the car and saves her, beating up the two men. Jake wants to arrest the two men but Alonzo just beats them up some more and lets them go. Jake is upset with Alonzo for letting them go but Alonzo insist on Jake to calm down. Stating the teenage girl cousins who are Los Angeles gang members will deal with the men. Also, he takes Jake on a raid with three other narks during his training session. During this raid Alonzo kills a drug dealer/ex officer on purpose and makes it look like Jake killed him after the dealer shot one of the other narks entering the house during the raid. But really Alonzo purpose of raiding the house is he just wants to steal the four million dollars the dealer has in his kitchen floor. To pay back a debt Alonzo owes to the Russia Mob. If Alonzo does not pay this debt back the Russia Mob will kill him. The narcotics team and Alonzo seize the couple million dollars from the known drug dealers ‘property, but when Alonzo offers Jake to take a cut of the money, Jake is confused and says no. After realizing how Alonzo’s narcotics team is being run, Jake wants out. “This is not what I signed up for,” he states in Ayer’s Training Day. But by this time, it is too late. Alonzo has left him in a Los Angeles gang member’s house where the gang members are told to kill him. Jake, eventually, escapes after he convinces the Los Angeles gang members to let him go for saving their little cousin early in the movie. Jake still wants to do the right thing, so he goes and finds Alonzo and takes back the money he stole early in a police raid that Alonzo is going to use to pay off the Russian mob. If Alonzo doesn’t pay off the debt, he will be killed. Jake still takes the money anyway and turns it in to the police as evidence. Alonzo gets killed later that night, Jake has no sympathy for him. He feels the Los Angeles Police Department and the streets of Los Angeles will be a better place without him.
Ayer used many good strategies to inform his audience on the life of narcotics officers and gang-infested neighborhoods. One strategy he used was showing the life of a crooked nark. This life shows how they abuse their authority, using it to their advantage, violating people’s rights, and breaking the law. In the movie, the veteran officer, Alonzo, is crooked. His actions show him stealing from drug dealers and killing ex-police officers. Also, he harasses innocent teenagers, stealing from them as well. He gets away with it because he is a police officer, With this strategy, Ayer informs us on what’s out there in the real world. Anyone who has been arrested or harassed by the police can relate to this. The strategy affects the audience in many ways. The audience can relate to this because they see it every day in the urban communities. They see police abusing the public arresting, harassing, and killing innocent people. This creates a sense of pathos with the audience getting emotional because they can relate to what they are seeing. They feel for people being treated so unfairly by crooked officers.
Furthermore, Ayer uses the life of a rookie nark trying to move up in the police force. In the movie, Jake just wants to be a police officer, a police officer that protects, serves, and locks away all the criminals. Jake wants to bring justice to anyone who breaks the law. He signs up for narcotics hoping to put away the drug dealers. In the movie, he constantly says, “I just want to lock up the bad guys”. This gives the audience a chance to see what being a nark really is all about. The audience can relate to this in many ways. Everybody knows how it feels being new to something and wanting to do what is right, especially law enforcement officers. I bet many officers who see this movie knew exactly how it feels being rookies on the force, being trained, hoping one day they can be part of the narcotics team. Ayer utilizes a great deal of pathos arousing emotion in these police officers and people who can relate to Jake’s journey. He is just trying to do what he loves to do.
Finally, the last strategy Ayer uses to inform his audience about the narcotics officer’s work and gang-infested communities is filming on the streets of Los Angeles. The streets of Los Angeles are very dangerous, particularly in the urban communities. On the streets drugs, poverty, violence, and most importantly gangs, exist. When shooting this film, this was the first time gangs even allowed cameras to be brought into their environment, which established ethos, giving the movie major credibility about the gangs and their way of living. The audience is connected to this because every state in United States of America has an urban community. During the movie, there were shootouts and drug scenes. Also there were drug users and rapists. Shootouts and drug transactions/altercations occur often in the urban communities of California. Some of gang members were not actors but actual members of Los Angeles street gangs. By incorporating actual gang members, Ayer gives a perfect description to his audience of gang life and the streets of Los Angeles.
David Ayer’s plan when writing this film was not just to tell an ordinary story of a narcotics officer but to show the audience the harsh reality of gangs and inner city violence which involve law enforcement, guilty and innocent people. The Los Angeles street setting was the perfect environment for the film. Ayer did a excellent job on informing his audience about the journeys of street cops and gang-infested neighborhoods by using two narcotics police officers, and the streets of Los Angeles. The streets of Los Angeles are a dangerous place and can even corrupt police officers. Jake found that out when he stepped into his trainer Alonzo’s office a Monte Carlo. Training Day demonstrates that just because individuals wear badges, they are not law abiding.
