Don’t believe the trailers. This film is far less than they would like you to believe. As much as I wanted to love Street Kings and say that David Ayer was able to repeat the success he found with his Training Day script, it seems police corruption stories don’t always work out.
Keanu Reeves stars as police detective Tom Ludlow. The trailers would lead you to believe he is corrupt. I wouldn’t go that far. Ludlow is more of a hardnosed copper. Yeah, he plants evidence here and there, but only on the bad guys, and they are typically dead when he is done with them so what does it really matter. I mean, who hasn’t planted evidence… right?
Anyway, Ludlow is involved in a little cop team similar to the boys on “The Shield”, but I would say Vic Mackey and his boys on “The Shield” are corrupt while Ludlow and his boys are always looking to catch the baddies. However, this time the baddies are assumed to be the coppers. Yup, Internal Affairs has their eyes on Ludlow and his team as one of Ludlow’s former partners is spilling the beans. Things don’t improve when said former partner ends up dead in what originally looks like a gang shooting during a robbery, but ends up looking like more than it really is.
To tell you anymore would spoil the surprise, but if you do happen into this film you will see things only seem to get complicated. Seriously, this film goes out of its way to be trixy and the story they are telling isn’t anywhere near big enough to keep you from praying there is something more. Too bad there isn’t.
Probably the saddest thing about Street Kings is that some of the performances given are way too good for this movie to be as one note as it ends up being. Chris Evans is fantastic and I really think he is going to hit it big one of these days. Evans was always the best thing about the Fantastic Four films, he did well in Sunshine and he knocks it out of the park in a very pivotal role in Street Kings. Keanu Reeves also gives one of his better performances. Keanu has never been one of the greatest actors, he has always just chosen great films, but here he is able to rise above the “wooden” stereotype he has gained and gives a very mature performance, which I think is the best way to describe it. It is almost as if you can see a change in him now that he is over the 40-year-old hump. Perhaps there are some great things still to come from Mr. Reeves.
Forest Whitaker on the other hand was wildly unimpressive, and outside of his performance as Idi Amin I have never really been impressed with him. In Street Kings he almost seems to be trying to channel Denzel and it doesn’t work, not for a second. You actually begin to wonder if maybe Ayer wanted to cast Denzel but ended up with Forest and during the film would just say, “That’s great Forest, but could you do it a little more like Denzel would?” It really gets to be that bad.
Then there is Hugh Laurie, and his character’s introduction. For anyone that has seen “House” knows Hugh Laurie as the smart ass doctor House, well, here he is introduced by wheeling into an exam room where Ludlow is being treated for a gunshot wound. He plays it like House and you begin to wonder if he is just some smart ass doc or what’s going on. Turns out he is the lead Internal Affairs detective. Unfortunately his character is shot for anyone that loves him as House because his introduction just doesn’t work, much like the film.
Overall, you aren’t going to mind the high levels of violence Street Kings offers, but this film plays more like a very well produced made-for-TV movie more than an actual feature film. The blood, cursing and violence lets you know it is definitely a theatrical release, but considering how small the actual story is you feel like they could have wrapped it up in a 60 minute drama.
