Fuqua began his career directing music videos for popular artists such as Toni Braxton, Coolio, Stevie Wonder, and Prince. From 1998 onwards, he began directing feature films, although he has worked on a few music videos since then. In a tribute article for TIME magazine, Fuqua expressed his early respect for Kurosawa as a filmmaker and how Kurosawa influenced his own perspective on filmmaking stating: "(screenwriter Hashimoto's) … working with Akira Kurosawa and Hideo Oguni, was so beautiful and poetic and powerful and heartbreaking. It was all about justice, it was all about sacrifice, and it made me want to be one of those guys". His first feature film was the John Woo-produced action film The Replacement Killers (1998), starring Chow Yun Fat. He then directed the crime thriller Training Day (2001), for which star Denzel Washington wo...read more