(Credits: YouTube Still)
Sun 19 October 2025 22:30, UK
The magic behind the filmmaking process was never lost on Ethan Hawke.
He knew that he was creating moments that were going to live on forever in cinema history if he was lucky, and going through his filmography, anyone would kill to have the kind of opportunities he did to transform himself into legends in films like the Before series or The Magnificent Seven. But every so often an actor will come along that will be able to stop anyone else in their tracks when they arrive on a movie set.
And it’s not like Hawke wasn’t a stranger to massive performances, either. Anyone who has had the luxury of performing opposite a star like Robin Williams got a front-row seat on how to transform a scene, and even when he was still a kid, being able to work opposite a talent like River Phoenix was bound to be educational.
But when looking at his early output, Hawke never wanted to get tied down to one certain role. He had a thousand different directions that he could go in, and while not everything had a convoluted development like Boyhood, for instance, it was better for him to start working on films that struck a nerve with him first before he looked at the kind of box office potential it had. Once Anton Fuqua began working on Training Day, though, Hawke had a massive opportunity ahead of him.
It’s one thing to play a cop in a high-stakes crime thriller, but anyone who has ever stood opposite a true thespian like Denzel Washington has ascended to a higher plane of acting. Simply put, Washington is one of the greatest actors of all time, and even if he was known for playing good-hearted people that managed to always do the right thing, seeing him absorb every single piece of Alonzo Harris is so deliciously sinister when he comes onscreen.
Because as much as we want to believe that someone like Washington couldn’t possibly be up to no good, his turn as a crooked cop is masterful in how subtle he can be as well. Everyone might remember the vicious tirade he goes on at the end of the movie, but the more unsettling moments come earlier in the movie, specifically when he flips on a dime when showing Hawke’s Jake Hoyt the ropes of what it’s like being a cop in downtown Los Angeles.
And while Hawke was ready for anything, he knew that a lot was riding on him standing next to a film legend, saying, “Denzel is one of a kind, one in a generation. It’s like playing rhythm guitar really well to somebody’s solo. If you screw it up, you can screw up [the whole thing]. The only reason this guy’s not going to get an Academy Award is if I screw it up. So I had to be present and use everything I learned.”
It might have been a crash course in how to craft a performance, but Hawke does hold his own next to Washington most of the time. Watching Harris go from owning the place to looking desperate for a single second wouldn’t have worked if Hawke wasn’t locked in, but over the course of one day, he makes Hoyt feel like the kind of person who could stare the prospect of death right in the face and not be afraid of what happens.
Although Harris is the kind of performance that most artists dream of getting once in their lives, it wasn’t about Washington trying to build his masterpiece. He was only doing what was right for the scene every single time he performed, and after the first few takes, he went from one of the purest hearts in cinema history to a cold-blooded killer that uses his police badge as a security blanket.