Street Kings

Rating: 2.5/5
Starring: Keanu Reeves, Forrest Whitaker, Hugh Laurie
Directed by: David Ayer
Release Date: April 11, 2008

There are few surprises in “Street Kings,” the new LA-based crime thriller directed by “Training Day” writer David Ayer.

Keanu Reeves stars as Tom Ludlow, an alcoholic, morally-confused detective who tosses the rule book out the window in favor of what gets results.

Forrest Whitaker revisits some of his best bipolar moments from “Last King of Scotland” as Reeves’ commanding officer who refers to Ludlow as “the tip of my spear.”

James Ellroy’s story is pessimistic and focuses with an uncomfortable clarity on the ethical confusions of a city where neither cops nor criminals operate by the rules.

Ellroy’s Los Angeles is becoming more and more familiar to audiences who have seen some of his original screen stories (“Dark Blue”) and his novels adapted as overblown crime melodramas (“The Black Dhalia”) or classic modern noir (“LA Confidential”). Perhaps it was the latter film’s unlikely skill at translating Ellroy’s sparse prosaic vision into the film format that has overshadowed all other attempts.

“Street Kings” was written directly for the screen (Jamie Moss and Kurt Wimmer also get script credits) and quite deftly presents Ellroy’s worldview on screen. Unfortunately a lot of the acting is flat (I mean, Keanu Reeves is the star; I shouldn’t expect much) and the story is simple and less shifty than it hopes to be.

Detective Tom Ludlow performs a number of underhanded operations for his Captain (Whitaker) and is so successful that Cap sends him to the complaint desk until any trouble from Internal Affairs (embodied by the painfully-miscast Hugh Laurie) blows over.

Some of this trouble comes from Ludlow’s former partner who has transformed from corrupt officer to whistle-blower quickly enough to anger both the criminals on the street and in the department.

A convenience store hold-up gone wrong results in the death of this honest troublemaker, but the murder scene bears the marks of an assassination. Ludlow takes it upon himself to find out whether the hit came from the crooks or the cops.

There is some decent acting in this movie, at least enough to keep things interesting, but no one can really keep up with the stylishly-stilted dialogue except for Whitaker, who adds some depth to what could be one-note.

Evans is also fun to watch in the stock role of the rookie detective in over his head.

David Ayer seems to be a competent enough director, but does nothing to distinguish himself from the Antoine Fuquas of the world.

“Street Kings” is competently bleak and offers enough interesting moral dichotomies to make writing it off completely impossible, and yet it offers nothing to get excited about.

Popularity: unranked [?]

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This entry was posted on Friday, April 11th, 2008 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Cadenza. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.