Violence Is Never the Answer, Right?

A long, long time ago, back when I wrote the Starweek video column, I got really good at finding parallels or even a glancing resonance between movies that had literally nothing in common besides their street date. It became a perverse sort of triumph to connect unconnectable dots, but of course now I can’t quite shake the habit.

This week, though? This week is a snap. This week has two movies that both take place over the course of a single day or night, pivot on clear moral choices that are embraced or refused, and play with the idea of the corruption of a relative innocent by the crusty figure of authority they see as a mentor. It’s just that one of those movies is Training Day, and the other is Violent Night.

(See? I’m really good at this.)

Training Day is the bigger deal, I suppose, since it’s the one with all the prestige – it got Denzel Washington his second Oscar, after all (for Best Actor, though I’d argue that Ethan Hawke is the film’s real lead), and its critical acclaim cemented director Antoine Fuqua and screenwriter David Ayer as serious players in studio genre filmmaking. I would argue this picture stands as their finest work: Training Day tells a simple, compelling story where the tension builds in perfect synchronicity with the narrative’s momentum.

Washington’s performance as swaggering, motormouthed LAPD detective Alonzo Harris is one of his best, shifting between self-aware showboating and malevolence in a way that suggests both character and actor are in on their own bit – Harris is a genial hustler right up until he’s challenged, and then he explodes.

Hawke is at least as good, taking his trainee Jake Hoyt from cautious newbie to desperate action hero over the course of the picture in a way that always feels grounded, even though he spends half the picture in a state of barely coherent panic. Washington walks away with the picture largely because Hawke is there to put his performance in context: We have to be as scared of this guy as he is.

Ayer would try to rework this dynamic as a director with Christian Bale and Freddy Rodriguez in Harsh Times, and again with Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Peña in End of Watch, but both pictures start out at 11 and don’t have anywhere to go; Fuqua’s willingness to turn up the heat gradually makes Training Day far more effective. As does the bang-on supporting casting: Everybody remembers Eva Mendes and Macy Gray, sure, but there's Charlotte Ayanna Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre and Cliff Curtis and Raymond Cruz and a baby-faced Fran Kranz as the driver at an early traffic stop. Every few minutes, some new interesting face pops up; it's a great way to keep us on our toes.

Fun fact: Training Day was one of the last movies I saw before 9/11, at a press screening on the first weekend of TIFF; most audiences wouldn’t see it until later that fall, at a point in time when releasing a film that suggested American authority figures might not be the most upstanding people could have felt very risky. I suspect the fact that the movie ultimately reaffirms the righteousness of police made it a safer bet – family man Jake Hoyt does learn to be a better cop, after all – but the movie’s basic premise of Not All Cops rings a little hollow two decades on. Apparently there’s a prequel on the way. That sounds like a terrible idea.

Not a terrible idea: Remastering Training Day in 4K. The Blu-ray edition was long overdue for a remaster – this was one of Warner Home Entertainment’s earliest high-definition discs, and it looks it – and the UHD version is a revelation, with new detail and cooler color temperatures that bring the film more in line with the moodier and more atmospheric 35mm print I saw way back when.

The soundtrack has been given a similar quality bump from DVD-quality Dolby Digital to high-bitrate Dolby Atmos, and it packs a real punch, from the constant traffic noise to the placement of voices when a roomful of people start shouting at one another to the crack of gunfire. It's the best presentation you could want for this movie.

The companion Blu-ray has been remastered as well, and includes the same supplemental package from Warner’s previous releases: Audio commentary by Fuqua, deleted scenes and an alternate ending, a production featurette and two music videos. The only real complaint I have about this release is the terrible new jacket art seen above, which airbrushes Hawke into a waxwork James Franco. Not that I wouldn’t have watched that movie, mind you.

Now, speaking of morally ambivalent action heroes on whom King Kong has nothing: Have you seen what Santa Claus gets up to in Violent Night?

Yes, it’s weird that a Christmas movie is getting its video release in February, but honestly nothing about Tommy Wirkola’s knockaround action thriller really suits the seasonal norms. Having considered the question of whether Die Hard is a Christmas movie, Sonic the Hedgehog screenwriters Pat Casey and Josh Miller have a counter-argument: What if a Christmas movie was Die Hard, with an exhausted Saint Nick (David Harbour) forced to play hero when a baddie calling himself Mr. Scrooge (John Leguizamo) arrives to ruin the Christmas Eve gathering of the ultra-wealthy Lightstone clan, partially because he hates the holidays but mostly because he wants the $300 million stashed somewhere in the family compound.

Fortunately, not only is Santa real but this particular Santa is extremely good at killing people – as he wasn’t always a saint, you understand – and once he bonds with sweet-natured Trudi (Leah Brady), the youngest Lightstone, he has a reason to unleash hell on Mr. Scrooge’s little helpers, throwing goons through windows and off rooftops while Trudi puts her sadistic streak to good use devising booby traps straight out of Home Alone ... but with way more stopping power, since Violent Night comes from the cheery folks who gave us John Wick, Atomic Blonde, Nobody, Kate and Bullet Train, among others.

Look, you either buy into this sort of thing right away or you don’t, and I did. Violent Night knows exactly what sort of movie it is and it has a great deal of fun with that, from Harbour’s strangely compelling performance as a Santa who rediscovers the meaning of Christmas while stabbing people in the face with sharpened candy cane to Leguizamo’s pissy menace as his Hans Gruber, who may not believe in Christmas magic but certainly respects the body count his adversary is racking up.

The Lightstones aren’t exactly the most engaging characters, though it’s fun to watch rich jerks turn on one another the moment the chips are down – there’s enough of Ready or Not’s DNA in this movie to make me wonder how much more Melanie Scrofano, Kristian Bruun and Andie MacDowell might have brought to the party as squabbling hostages.

That said, Edi Patterson (of The Righteous Gemstones, sure, but more importantly the Comedy Bang Bang podcast MVP known as Bean Dip) is having a great time as the manipulative Alma, Copshop’s Alexis Louder underplays nicely as Trudi’s mom Linda and Beverly D’Angelo is smartly deployed as the family matriarch Gertrude. Wirkola, who made the Dead Snow splatter comedies and Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters, trusts the actors sell the material and finds fun ways to shoot the fight scenes, and what else can you ask from a picture like this? An emotional climax where a family unites through shared wonder at the existence of Santa Claus?

… well, you get that too.

Universal didn’t produce a 4K edition of Violent Night – thought I wouldn’t be surprised if Shout! Factory pops out a steelbook edition for the holidays – but the Blu-ray is pretty darn nice, with a crisp 1080p transfer that lets you appreciate every snowflake and ornament before and after they’re splattered with rich, red blood, and a DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack that pays just as much attention to the brutal foley effects as it does to the orchestra playing Dominic Lewis’ cheerful, demented score, which elegantly adds Michael Kamen action stings to holiday standards in what’s probably the movie’s best Die Hard meta-joke.

Supplements include an audio commentary from Wirkola, Casey, Miller and producer Guy Danella, about 20 minutes of deleted and extended scenes – none of which feels terribly essential, especially since the finished film runs nearly two hours as it is – and short featurettes on the production, the fight choreography and Harbour’s casting, which really is a kind of miracle in itself. He’s such an unusual but perfect choice that I can’t think of another actor who’d have pulled off the mixture of aging grump and gung-ho mania this version of the character requires. There’s a real Nick Nolte-circa-1982 thing going on, and Harbour never steps wrong. And while I would usually say a gimmick picture like this doesn’t need a sequel, Leitch and crew have talked about bringing in Charlize Theron as Mrs. Claus for a prospective Violent Night 2, and … well, yeah. I’ll be first in line for that.

The 4K edition of Training Day and the Blu-ray combo of Violent Night are now available from Warner Home Entertainment and Universal Pictures Home Entertainment, respectively.

Also: We have winners! Brandon Moore is the winner of that shiny Blu-ray/DVD combo of The Fabelmans, courtesy of Universal Pictures Home Entertainment, and Dan Moore gets the 4K UHD edition of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre from MPI Media Group. I know I was talking about my ability to make connections between unrelated things, but both winners were chosen entirely at random, I swear. Good week to be a Moore, I guess!

(Didn’t know about the Texas Chain Saw contest? Upgrade to a paid subscription and you won’t miss a single one of these giveaways!)

Coming up in Sunday’s paid edition: Two more LAIKA masterworks get bumped up to Ultra High Definition, and Rocky Balboa finally starts swinging in 4K if the review set arrives in time. Don’t miss out.