Street Kings

Street Kings

7.5 out of 10

Posted: 06/01/08

Running time: 1:47

MPAA rating: R (Strong violence and pervasive language.)

Peruvian rating: Mayores de 18

Cast: Keanu Reeves, Forest Whitaker, Hugh Laurie, Chris Evans, Naomie Harris.
Director: David Ayer
Script: James Ellroy and Kurt Wimmer and Jamie Moss
Photography: Gabriel Beristain
Score: Graeme Revell
Distributor: Fox Searchlight Pictures

Street Kings is an old-fashioned good-cop-versus-bad-guys actioner. The way it’s shot, the performances and even the plot itself, everything brings the viewer back to the 80s and 90s, a time when action flicks full of explosions, shoot-outs and corrupt bad guys were cool. Even though Street Kings doesn’t have a single explosion, it does have plenty of shoot-outs. Actually, Keanu Reeves plays a super cop here, surviving kidnappings, shootings, a plot, and killing about thirty cops, drugs dealers and villains in general during the whole running time. So, is Street Kings any good? Well, if you like old-fashioned action movies that don’t require any CGI or complicated special effects in order to work, you’ll definitely enjoy it. The plot may not be particularly air-tight – it’s actually pretty convoluted – and it might be a little too violent, but as a cop flick, Street Kings is a pretty effective motion picture.

The film tells the story of Tom Ludlow (Keanu Reeves), a dirty cop who, instead of trying or arresting bad guys, decides to shoot them and/or kill them every time he has the chance, totally ignoring the law. When he decides to eliminate a couple of Korean child rapists, a “cop hunter”, Captain Biggs (Hugh Laurie) of Internal Affairs, decides to run an investigation on him. Things start to get even worse when former partner Washington (Terry Crews), is killed in a convenience story robbery. Tom's boss (Forest Whitaker) tells him to forget about the event and move on, but Tom befriends homicide detective Paul “Disco” Diskant (Chris Evans), so that they can follow a series of evidence and maybe seek his own redemption.

Actors who perform in these kinds of flicks don’t require too much talent in order to play their parts. All they need is to convey the right emotion in the right times, and to be physically fit in order to kill as many bad guys as possible. What surprised me about Street Kings, though, is that it attracted an enormous amount of talent, featuring actors who have better acting capabilities than the average cop movie protagonist. (Like the seemingly immortal Steven Seagal.) Keanu Reeves plays Tom in a very effective fashion. The character is fleshed-out with a little background and some clichéd-but-effective characteristics (his wife is dead and now he’s become a racist alcoholic), and Reeves manages to make him a decent protagonist. Forest Whitaker as Tom’s boss is not bad, but his talent is a little wasted with a pretty thankless role. Hugh Laurie (sans British accent) plays his character pretty much the same way as he plays Dr. House. Same accent, same attitudes, same everything. I really like the man, but I definitely prefer him in his British productions. (Gotta love him as stupid George in the Blackadder seasons.)

Even more secondary – and less important – characters are played by pretty recognizable thespians. We’ve got Chris Evans (Fantastic Four) as “Disco”, a temporary partner for Tom; Everybody Hates Chris’ Terry Crews as Tom’s ex-partner, and Naomie Harris (Pirates of the Caribbean 2 and 3) in a surprisingly small role as Crews’ wife. They all do respectable jobs with their limited screentime, although no one really shines. This is the kind of movie in which there’s not a bad performance to be found, but where every thespian seems to be playing roles they could create in their sleep. There’s a lot of star-power to be found in this picture, to be sure, but that doesn’t mean these recognizable actors are actually putting their hearts into the movie.

But what about the action? Well, those looking for something more in the vein of what we have been presented in the last five or so years – meaning action in a Michael Bay kind of style – will be disappointed. This is an 80s cop movie, meaning that the protagonist is good but flawed – alcoholic, racist, a killing machine -, and that the action is anything but tongue-in-cheek. Street Kings is full of gritty shoot-outs and killings, which haven’t been created to raise pulses in the audience, but to serve the purposes of the story. Granted, Keanu Reeves ends up killing an army of people by the time end credits roll, but he does it in a more realistic style. There’s no actual gore, but there’s plenty of blood to be found, and some of the killings made me flinch or turn around. This is gritty, straightforward action, and although it works, it does so in a less “blockbustery” kind of way. Why can’t Tom live a “normal live like everyone else”? Well, because the only way he can escape from his problems seems to be killing bad guys, it seems.

A thing or two about the screenwriters. Considering the final product, I was kinda amazed by the people that were responsible for the screenplay of Street Kings. First, we’ve got James Ellroy who, although being a veteran of gritty and dark cop movies that deal with drug dealers and really nasty stuff, hadn’t been involved in a motion picture script before. There’s also Kurt Wimmer, who has been responsible for both a really interesting and tense sci-fi actioner (Equilibrium) and a vomit-inducing wreck of a movie (Ultraviolet), and hadn’t produced a cop film before. Finally, there’s Jamie Moss, who pretty much hadn’t done anything for the movie industry before. It’s a pretty curious team of screenwriters, to be sure, but it seems they worked pretty well together, as they ended up fashioning a suitably interesting and tense crime movie. The only grip I have about the script, though, is related to the ending which is, in short, moronic, and seems to have been added in the last moment. This last scene is not bad enough to make Street Kings unwatchable, but it somehow managed to make it a little less enjoyable.

Ultimately, although Street Kings is not a perfect motion picture, it definitely managed to provide with some solid action (80s-style), mildly interesting characters, compelling – although not precisely memorable – performances and a solid screenplay. It had been some time since I’d seen a cop flick in theatres, and although it’s not on the same level as some of the classics from the 80s, it doesn’t really feel like a throwback. It’s refreshing to watch an action film that doesn’t depend on CGI or fatuous special effects, actually, and although the last scene is disappointing, I was generally impressed and thoroughly entertained by Street Kings. If you like old-fashioned cop movies and realistic action sequences, you’ll really like this motion picture.