Plot Summary (Training Day) Training Day

Alonzo controls the audition from the first minute

Jake Hoyt (Ethan Hawke), a young LAPD patrol officer, reports for a one-day evaluation ride-along with Detective Alonzo Harris (Denzel Washington), a decorated narcotics officer whose approval could secure Jake's transfer to a plainclothes unit. They meet at a diner, where Alonzo immediately establishes dominance -- quizzing Jake about his ambitions, mocking his eagerness, testing how far the rookie will bend. Alonzo's black Monte Carlo is his "office," and the streets of Los Angeles are his kingdom. (wikipedia)

The PCP pipe is the first line Jake crosses

During a traffic stop, Alonzo confiscates marijuana from two college students but lets them go. He then orders Jake to smoke it. Jake refuses. Alonzo puts a gun to his head and explains that if Jake can't pass for someone who uses drugs, he'll get killed undercover. Jake smokes. What Alonzo doesn't tell him is that the marijuana is laced with PCP. The drug hits Jake hard, and the day takes on a dissociative edge -- the rookie is now compromised, compliant, and unable to trust his own judgment. (wikipedia)

Alonzo stages a series of escalating tests

The day proceeds through a gauntlet of morally corrosive encounters. Alonzo and Jake interrupt a pair of crack users assaulting a teenage girl; Jake saves her, earning Alonzo's grudging respect. They visit a wheelchair-bound dealer named Blue and shake him down for information. They call on Alonzo's girlfriend Sara (Eva Mendes) and their young son in a small house in the neighborhood. Each stop reveals another layer of Alonzo's operations -- the informants who fear him, the community members who know him, the web of favors and threats that sustains his power. (wikipedia)

The fake warrant at Sandman's apartment crosses into felony territory

Alonzo takes Jake to the apartment of a dealer named Kevin "Sandman" Miller (Macy Gray), where they serve what Jake discovers is a fabricated search warrant. Alonzo finds cash hidden in the kitchen and pockets it. Jake is now an unwitting accomplice to armed robbery under color of authority. Alonzo frames this as standard operating procedure -- "the game" -- and tells Jake that results matter more than rules. (wikipedia)

Roger's murder reveals Alonzo's real agenda

The day's central crime occurs at the home of Roger (Scott Glenn), a retired narcotics detective and Alonzo's former partner. Alonzo and a team of corrupt officers -- Tim (Harris Yulin), Stan Gursky (Tom Berenger), Lou (Raymond J. Barry), and Jeff (Peter Greene) -- arrive with another fabricated warrant. Alonzo executes Roger in his own home, then recovers $4 million in cash from a safe beneath the kitchen floor. The money is Alonzo's real objective: he owes it to the Russian mafia after killing a member of their organization in Las Vegas. If he doesn't pay by midnight, he's dead. The entire day has been an elaborate scheme to fund his survival, with Jake as the designated fall guy. (wikipedia)

Jake refuses to sign and the partnership shatters

After the murder, Alonzo orders Jake to sign a false report claiming Roger drew a weapon. Jake refuses. The other officers have already signed. Alonzo now has a problem: a witness who won't cooperate. He drives Jake to a Bloods-controlled housing project in the Jungle -- Baldwin Village -- and leaves him with Smiley (Cliff Curtis) and his crew, with the implicit understanding that Jake will not leave alive. (wikipedia)

The girl Jake saved earlier saves him in return

In Smiley's apartment, the gang members are about to execute Jake in the bathtub when one of them discovers the wallet Jake took from the crack users' assault scene earlier that day. The wallet belongs to Smiley's young cousin -- the same girl Jake rescued. Smiley lets Jake go. The film's moral logic pays off its setup: the one genuinely righteous act Jake performed during the day is the thing that saves his life. (wikipedia)

Alonzo's neighborhood turns against him

Jake fights his way back to Alonzo's safe house in the neighborhood, where Sara and his son live. He confronts Alonzo, and the two fight in the street. Alonzo pulls his gun and threatens to kill Jake, then appeals to the watching neighborhood residents for support. No one moves. The community that feared Alonzo has finally stopped protecting him. Jake takes the Roger murder money and Alonzo's arrest evidence, leaving Alonzo alive but stripped of his power, his money, and his shield. (wikipedia)

The street collects the debt Alonzo can't pay

Jake walks away. Alonzo, desperate, tries to drive to the airport to flee the country. At a traffic light, the Russian mafia intercepts him and guns him down. A news report later confirms that a decorated narcotics officer was found shot to death in his vehicle. The wages of sin are death -- the phrase Denzel Washington wrote on his script before shooting began. (wikipedia, slashfilm)