monologues

Training Day’s “King Kong” monologue stands tall among the great speeches of cinema. Denzel Washington elevates the iambic pentameter of Iago, the villain of William Shakespeare’s Othello, to syncopated street rhythms. It is on par with Marlon Brando’s reflections on the horrors of war as Col. Kurtz in Apocalypse Now, it is the inverse of Gregory Peck’s monologues as Atticus Finch in To Kill A Mockingbird, and it ranks with Joe Pesci’s “Do you think I’m funny?” scene in Goodfellas or Groucho Marx’s breakdown in the middle of reconciliation in Duck Soup. But the single line of dialogue which hits…