Street Kings doesn't necessarily require that much explaining. It's a dirty cop flick so firmly set in its genre and flooded with convention that at times it's slightly embarrassing to watch. There's little here that hasn't been done before -- or done better. It's often a point-for-point blurring of officer and outlaw seen in classics like Touch of Evil, Dirty Harry, Training Day or basically anything Scorsese. Yet as indulgent or redundant as the characters and story may get, Street Kings still manages to maintain its genre's most important convention:
It's undeniably entertaining. On the strength of a sizeable cast and some veterans in the production department, Street Kings pulls through its moribund world with a healthy dose of glamorized Hollywood grit.
Much of whether Street Kings works for you will probably come down to whether you can buy its lead man, Keanu Reeves, playing the role of a conflicted badass. For my money, with 60 odd films under his belt, Reeves is finally starting to escape the stigma of the Bill and Ted films (which, don't get me wrong, I love) and that "Woah" line from The Matrix. In his own odd way, Reeves actually provides a spark of originality to what would otherwise be a complete Dirty Harry knock off. Sure he's the same rule bending, violent alcoholic with a blood-stained heart of gold, but he's being played by a 20-years-later Ted Logan and, shockingly, he's actually pulling it off. Part of the fun of a Keanu Reeves movie has always been seeing just how far his seemingly limited acting skills can stretch, and here they nearly go all Stretch Armstrong on you.
Reeves, however, has a lot of supporting players to lean on. Forest Whitaker delivers an appropriately manic performance. The guy has a lot of screen presence, so sticking him in as crooked police captain almost guarantees you'll get something watchable. Hugh Laurie (perhaps better known as Dr. House) makes a few brief but notable appearances, shirking his signature smarter-than-you doctor act for, well, a smarter-than-you cop act. Up and comer Chris Evans also makes a bid to prove he can play something other than the smartass Johnny Storm of the laughably bad Fantastic Four films and, despite a fairly statically written character, succeeds.
The oddest ensemble comes from behind the scenes. Street Kings teams director David Ayer, best known for writing Training Day, with a story from the author of L.A. Confidential, James Ellroy, which was in turn scripted by the writer/director of Equilibrium and Ultraviolet, Kurt Wimmer. That's a lot of clashing sensibilities to throw into one boiling pot. The end result leaves Ayer's grit, Ellroy's sweeping storytelling and Wimmer's extreme campiness all vying for a piece of the screen. It's a tumultuous concoction to say the least. Just when the raw violence of a gun fight draws you in, you can't help but giggle at the fact Reeves was downing vodka in middle of it. Meanwhile the film's board-game plot construction, which winds toward a predictably dramatic conclusion à la L.A. Confidential, clashes with a more character-driven examination of violence (as seen in Ayer's underrated directorial debut Harsh Times).
But maybe the messiness of it all is part of the fun. Street Kings isn't a great film, but it's a guilty pleasure with just a sprinkling of artistic merit. I mean let's face it -- dirty cops are just so damn lovable.
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