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Street Kings [2008]
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Editorial
Amazon.co.uk Review
Street Kings is a pungent bouquet of corruption, violence, multi-ethnic mayhem, macho glee laced with macho angst, and fluorescently obscene dialogue from the mind of James Ellroy. Its hero, though he'd scarcely consent to be called one, is L.A. police detective Tom Ludlow (Keanu Reeves), for whom life is a wound that won't heal and dealing out retribution to scumbags is the ongoing treatment. Ludlow's the star player--"the tip of the [expletive] spear"--on a team of detectives headed by Capt. Jack Wander (Forest Whitaker). Coach Wander relies on his boys to keep breaking lurid cases, usually through deeply darkside underground work, and raising his profile with the media and the department. In pursuit of these goals, nothing is forbidden except failure, and the truth is what you make it look like. This is familiar Ellroy territory, most effectively translated to the screen in L.A. Confidential (which should have won the 1997 Oscar, and would have if Titanic hadn't launched that year). If you know Ellroy's ground game, you can pretty much guess where Street Kings is going, and where it's been. Still, the twists and torques of its urban road-rage course maintain the centrifugal force needed to hold us in our seats (a tactical highlight: refrigerator adapted as rolling barricade), and the movie keeps bopping us with oddball casting coups: comic Jay Mohr and Northern Exposure/Sex and the City veteran John Corbett as two members of Coach Warden's gonzo detective squad; Cedric the Entertainer doing a nicely nuanced turn as a street creature; Hugh Laurie doing a less-hyper version of House, if House worked Internal Affairs. The problem is that director David Ayer keeps everything intense. Dialogues are shot too close-up, line readings are too strident, the action is too nonstop slam. Recall Curtis Hanson's L.A. Confidential and the mind's eye summons up a whole spectrum of existence, mood, place, historical period, emotional investment; there's an amplitude to the picture and the sensibility bringing it to us, something besides the whodunit and the endless rap sheet of nasty what-they-done. Everything in Street Kings is one-note, and with Keanu Reeves playing it implosive and Forest Whitaker locked in crazier-than-an-outhouse-rat mode, that's no way to stay the course. --Richard T. Jameson
Two and a half stars
Review date: 2008-11-09 Rating: 6 out of 10
This plays like a third of the plot of L.A. Confidential - not surprising when you realise that it's co-written by James Ellroy. Tough, but tender, dumb cop is manipulated by senior officers in the LAPD for their own ends. Everyone is cynical, everyone is corrupt, everyone is violent, to the point where you begin to wonder how the LAPD can even function anymore.And yet this modern look at crime and punishment is so old fashioned. We've seen it all before in films like The French Connection only more interestingly done. At the end I half expected someone to tell Keanu Reeves "It's Chinatown, Jake.". Violent, action-packed, reasonably acted, competently directed and strangely boring. Reeves compares badly to Denzil Washington's similar turn in the superior Training Day.Watching it,I found myself thinking about how much cop drama has moved on. I'd rather watch a couple of episodes of The Closer or Life than movies like this. Someone needs to tell everyone involved that the bar has been raised and stuff like this doesn't really cut it anymore.
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Reviews
Run of the mill 'gritty cop drama that plays out like a mediocre, forgettable episode of a TV cop show
Review date: 2008-10-31 Rating: 4 out of 10
The main star Reeves is pretty wooden, definately lacking in any emotional conviction in his acting - how can I care about a character that has probably only three facial expressions? He's got a blank look in his eyes most of the time. Whittaker is good but not his usual best. Chris Evans was the best for me, who seemed alot more natural than the other actors playing cops. The rappers (The Game and Common) in this are surprisingly good too, but it's a shame the main actor isn't Laurie is good too, if underused.
It's a quite alright running time and doesn't go on for too long but the story doesn't live up to expectations. On and the twist? I didn't buy that and there's better twists in TV cop dramas to be honest. The story is mildly interesting but not as action packed as you might think, or at least not in an original or amazing way.
Alot of oranges and blacks so it's pretty standard. The action parts, in particular during a foot chase scene lacks the energy and real heart-pumping, edge-of-the-seat feeling to it that I've enjoyed in other thrillers.
The score isn't memorable and the hip hops songs heard alot desperately try to add street 'atmosphere'. It all gives an air that it's trying to be tough and gritty but just isn't cause it's rying too hard and isn't inventive.
Overall: The script doesn't have anything new to say about crime in L.A., the dialogue is mostly contrived (witness the scene near the beginning with Reeves and the Korean men) and seems to use alot of f-words for the sake of it.
The twist was badly execited and predictable, the acting from the lead was flat and unconvincing and just doesn't have enough grit or moving scenes ro truly show the extent of how dangerous life on the 'mean' streets probably is. Quite forgettable really and there's no flair or spark that sets it apart from what I've seen hundreds of times before.
No extras as well! Am I glad that I only rented this.
Keanu battles his way through a web of police corruption in this enjoyable cop thriller
Review date: 2008-10-20 Rating: 8 out of 10
This is very much the sort of film where you have to make sure you keep up as if you lose your concentration for a minute then you'll end up losing the plot of the film, as there's so many twists and turns to it.
Keanu Reeves is as wooden as ever but he always brings a kind of charisma to the roles he plays and despite some deadpan acting he actually plays the lead role well. His character, an alcoholic cop who's very much on the edge, is a departure from Reeves's normal roles. His character is far from whiter than white, he serves a corrupt Captain, and his methods are often indistinguishable from the crooks he's trying to bring to justice.
But when the corrupt circles Reeves's character mixes in results in the murder of his ex-partner, he decides enough is enough. This is where the twists and turns start as the web of corruption is so well organised it's difficult to tell who can be trusted and who cannot. The film has its brutal moments as Reeves's character single handily takes on the organised corruption that he used to be a part of.
The film powerfully portrays how corruption brings out the worst in people, turning good cops into bad cops, and shows how turning a blind eye to such corruption is almost as bad as being a part of it. This a very enjoyable thriller with some good performances all round, definitely worth checking out.
Better than I had hoped...
Review date: 2008-10-14 Rating: 6 out of 10
I saw this on a plane journey of 12 hours plus so needed entertaining. I didn't expect much as Keanu is a poor actor, but its actually a good film with a few good twists. Won't change the world BUT a good way to pass a few hours...
Overblown Cop Melodrama
Review date: 2008-10-04 Rating: 4 out of 10
Dull is not a word an apparently "gritty cop thriller" would want to be labelled as, but "Street Kings" is just that - dull. It's basically a carbon retread of Ron shelton's "Dark Blue" and Antwone Fuqua's "Training Day," and no wonder why, as both of those films shared the common writing factor of David Ayer - a screenwriter turned director here in his first movie. He produced the screenplays for the aforementioned cop thrillers which I actually really liked, even though they were similar in theme and plot, both of them still held up as decent, contemporary, corruption amongst cops stories. But now with Ayer making his directorial bow with "Street Kings" it's like, sing us a new tune David, Jeez.
The great James Ellroy is the writer of record on this screenplay and personally I cannot understand how his hand could have produced this many cliches and contrivances. It is all so thoroughly predictable, you may not only feel an extreme sense of déjà vu whilst watching it, but you may also see every lumbering plot twist (particularly the `big' twist) coming at least twenty minutes before it drags its lazy butt across the finish line.
Keanu Reeves is not renowned for his acting skills but I always give his movies the benefit of the doubt (The Devil's Advocate being his finest film and performance) but his thesping here is like watching an ex-stoner playing cop, wading through a haze of bong smoke with a loaded gun. He doesn't convince on any level. Forest Whitaker frustratingly continues his post-Oscar scenery chewing and goes a little too OTT while the rest of the support cast are strictly B-list, most them TV cast-offs, who should have stayed on the small screen. Hugh Laurie is particularly, and might I add, woefully miscast as an Internal Affairs ball breaker.
The action attempts the rough stuff, aiming for gritty, you-are-there intensity but falls short. Ayer pumps his images up with fashionable blood-letting, MTV attention deficient camera angles, with bursts of techno-inspired music blaring across the soundtrack. It all adds to the messy ineptness of the whole endeavour. The film is overblown to the point of ridiculousness where Keanu gets into some incredibly laboured and entirely implausible situations that reflects Hollywood police drama at its most unconvincing. This is an episode of "The Shield" blown-up for the big screen but lacking any of that show's grit, wit or ferocity.
Ayer and Ellroy should have equalled something very good indeed, and their names on this dud make it even more of a disappointment to watch as it's TV movie plot, indifferent performances, and melodramatic finale tie it all up into a rather ugly and insidiously dull package.
Product Details/Specifications
Actor(s):
Terry Crews
Hugh Laurie
Keanu Reeves
John Corbett
Forest Whitaker
Creators:
Keanu Reeves (Primary Contributor)
Forest Whitaker (Primary Contributor)
Director(s):
Recording label: 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment
Manufacturer: 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment
EAN: 5039036038409
Binding: DVD
Number of items: 1
Format: PAL,
Release date: 2008-09-15
Audience rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
Region code: 2
Running time: 105 minutes
Theatrical release date: 2008