Box Office: Day, Bandits Vie for Top Rank

October 14 -- Denzel Washington is No. 1 — barely. And maybe not for long.

Training Day, the violent crime drama that has the words "Denzel" and "Oscar" being repeated in the same sentence around town, is presently the top-grossing movie in America for the second weekend in a row, but Bruce Willis and Billy Bob Thornton's Bandits could leapfrog it when actual totals are released Monday. According to studio estimates compiled by Exhibitor Relations, a mere $83,000 is all that separates the two films.

Shoot, that's like puffing out your chest to break the tape at the end of the 100 meters. Memo to Willis (or Thornton, or director Barry Levinson, or co-star Cate Blanchett): Have your assistant pick up 10,000 movie tickets this afternoon.

With an estimated take of $13,545,000, Day, a Warner Bros. release, suffered a dip in earnings of approximately 40 percent from its $24 million opening. MGM's Bandits, playing at 495 more theaters, took in a projected $13,462,000. Estimates are generally accurate to within $1 million of actual earnings, leaving plenty of room for either film to stake a definitive claim to top-dog status.

The Chris Kattan vehicle Corky Romano finished a distant third, claiming a narrow victory of its own over the John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale heart-tugger Serendipity. Despite opening in fewer than 2,100 theaters, Corky rang up approximately $9.3 million in ticket sales; Serendipity, last week's second-place finisher, fell to No. 4 with an estimated $9 million haul.

The weekend's final wide-release newcomer, Miramax's Iron Monkey, made a muscular debut at just 1,225 sites, taking in an estimated $6 million to finish sixth. (The Chinese-language martial arts actioner is new to U.S. theaters, but was originally released overseas in 1993.) The Michael Douglas thriller Don't Say a Word, the nation's top-grossing movie just three weekends ago, slipped in ahead of Monkey to grab fifth place with a projected haul of $6.8 million.

Opening at just 68 theaters, David Lynch's critically praised Mulholland Drive posted a strong per-site average of $10,412, and a final gross of approximately $785,000.