Movie Review: “Street Kings”

Ten minutes into “Street Kings,” the film bluntly shows us what to expect for the next 100.

It’s probably safe to say that no fiction writer ever created bad cops as bad as James Ellroy’s. In Street Kings, a squalid and bloodthirsty policier based on an original story by the author of L.A. Confidential, Tom Ludlow (Keanu Reeves), a veteran LAPD vice cop, trash-talks racist garbage to a gang of Korean hoods, then storms their lair and shoots them dead with a fury that would leave Dirty Harry scrambling for his tattered copy of the Miranda rights. In the process, Ludlow rescues two girls that the gang had been hawking to pedophiles — and so, on the film’s terms, he’s a hero. But with heroes like this, who needs scumbags?

Trained as a pit bull, stripped of fear and almost without any pity (especially for himself), Tom has no sense that he’s fighting for someone else’s gain. Mr. Reeves, his face and body somewhat thickened, perhaps by age or the role or both, looks like a middleweight boxer who’s reached the end of a very hard and long road. (Robert Ryan had a lock on this type in the 1940s and ’50s.) Mr. Reeves’s natural sobriety works well for the part, as does his ability to play it stiff and straight and a touch stupid. Tom’s slow-dawning awareness of the world he inhabits and his awful place in it is terribly obvious, as is his metamorphosis, but neither is it devoid of pathos.

“Street Kings” wobbles increasingly as it runs along, beginning well, growing so-so and culminating in a preposterous here’s-what-it-all-means confession by the main villain. Still, the film has technical polish and inventive casting. Rappers Common and the Game make strong impressions as mysterious menaces, Cedric the Entertainer scores as a nervous drug dealer, and Laurie owns every scene.

Director Ayer has a real eye for capturing LA’s less glamorous streets, and with a story and screenplay by James Ellroy, another storyteller who knows his way around the turf, Street Kings has the makings of a classic cop drama. But somewhere along the line the dialogue and story took a turn down a dark alley lined with film clichés and Hollywood melodrama and didn’t emerge unscathed.

Trailer

Genre: Crime/Gangster, Drama, Thriller

Rating: R

Actors/Actresses: Keanu Reeves, Forest Whitaker, Hugh Laurie, Chris Evans, Jay Mohr

Our Verdict:

Save your money. Wait and rent it.