Street Kings

Review By: Michael Dance
MichaelDance@TheCinemaSource.com

Street Kings is a terrifically entertaining movie. I had a great time, and the audience I was with – a boisterous, multiracial crowd in Manhattan – ate it up too, complete with cheers for the good guys, boos for the bad guys, and applause for all the many cool parts.

Out of curiosity, I just checked Rotten Tomatoes to see how the reviews are so far. It's at only 32% fresh, with twice as many bad reviews as good. The major critics are sniping about the goofy ludicrousness of the whole enterprise. Funny, 'cause that's kind of the whole reason I liked it.

Take the scene (it's in the trailer) where Reeves traps a thug in some barbed wire after an extended chase. Reeves asks his name. "Quicks," the thug says. Reeves smiles: "Quicks, huh? Not quick enough."

Not only is that a hilariously lame joke, it's also really contrived – think about it, the only reason the thug's name is Quicks is so the writers could include that joke. And somehow, it works. I was cracking up.

The movie boils down to a lot of tough-talking men trying to out-tough-talk each other. It's well-staged action stitched together by nonstop pissing-match dialogue. Reeves plays corrupt cop Tom Ludlow, and just to let you know how badass he is, in the opening sequence he drives drunk, racially offends a few Korean hoods ("How am I supposed to know you're Korean? You dress white, talk black and drive Jew") and stages a shooting.

Apparently this type of behavior is common among Ludlow's frat-like L.A. police squad, which is lorded over by the imposing Captain Jack Wander (Forest Whitaker). Ludlow's on bad terms with his ex-partner (Terry Crews), who thinks he's a racist and now works for Captain Biggs (Hugh Laurie, still basically playing House), Wander's rival, who specializes in rooting out crooked cops.

But then the ex-partner is murdered and, well, something just doesn't smell right to ol' Ludlow. Maybe it's some leftover loyalty to his former friend, maybe it's a burgeoning conscience, but whatever it is, Ludlow goes against direct orders and starts tracking down the killers, only to uncover – shocker! – corruption in the highest levels of the force.

We've seen this type of plot before, sure. The original script was written by James Ellroy (L.A. Confidential) and is directed by David Ayer, who wrote Training Day and directed Harsh Times. These are guys who live and breathe stories about corrupt cops, and Street Kings is like their big, just-for-fun, everything-and-the-kitchen-sink opus.

This review may read like I'm making fun of the movie, but I'm really