REVIEW:
Street Kings is a clunky corrupt cops movie by David Ayer, the guy who specializes in corrupt cop movies. Only this isn’t one of his better films. Ayer is the guy who wrote Training Day, and directed End of Watch. Here he’s working from a screenplay by James Elroy, the guy who wrote LA Confidential. Now that’s worth noting, because both of these guys have done much better, more unique work, in this exact genre a lone. And this very much feels like a lesser version of their other films.
The story here is about a cop who is murdered and two other detectives who decide to go rogue and do their own team up investigation, away from the department. They are looking to uncover whether or not the murder was an inside the force, sanctioned hit. When Tom Ludlow (Keanu Reeves,) and Paul Diskant (Chris Evans,) join forces and sneak around to run their top secret interrogations, it feels right out of Confidential with the Bud White – Edmund Exely team up.
And when the movie becomes about uncovering the corruption, there’s a lot of Cop Land meets 21 Bridges meets The Reptile. Basically everything in this movie has been done better before. And even the interrogations just lead us from one source to the next, without getting very far. Our two heroes question one guy who is trapped in barbed wire on the roof, just to lead them to another guy who they get locked up until he talks. This inmate character leads them to Cedric the Entertainer, who finally sets up a meeting for them with the two guys they’re looking for. So it’s a lot of just running around town going from one source to the next. One or two of those sources could have easily been cut out and the movie would have been all the better for it.
But as much as this movie looks and feels familiar, it still has a little edge from time to time. When our characters encounter bodies in a yard, for example, and realize they have just uncovered a huge piece even though they don’t yet know what it means, it’s pretty cool. And one has to appreciate the talented cast, including Forest Whitaker, Hugh Laurie, and Jay Mohr. If only this one were written a little better.
There’s a conversation in here between Ludlow and the Hugh Laurie character, who is investigating for internal affairs, where Ludlow talks about how they need him on the streets. It’s right out of A Few Good Men, with Nicholson’s monologue about how “you need me on that wall. Who’s gonna do it?…you?” And that’s the story of this movie. Everything in here, we have seen before, and seen done better. Even the dialogue. This is like the B version of those other films. Sometimes it clunky and dumb, other times it’s okay. But it’s never anything special.