Street Kings Review
by Steve Rhodes (steve DOT rhodes AT internetreviews DOT com)April 11th, 2008
STREET KINGS
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 2008 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): *
It's hard to know where to begin in discussing this mess of a movie. Ranging from pretty preposterous to laughably bad, STREET KINGS is a silly and sappy melodrama that plays like an unintentional parody of old crime shows.
Since it's all bad, let's arbitrarily start with the film's ugly visuals. Shot with excessive use of extreme close-ups and fast editing, the movie gives you the nauseating feeling of sitting in the first row, no matter where you are in the theater. The effect is that all of the action -- whenever there is action, since this is a remarkably action-free action picture -- becomes a blur. It's frequently unclear who is shooting at whom and with what weapons. The cinematography is dark with the colors washed out, making it appear rather like a print of an old movie that has been sitting on the shelf for years.
STREET KINGS is the second film directed by David Ayer. Like most people, you probably missed his first one, HARSH TIMES. It was just as much of a disaster as this one, both of which feature lots of pseudo-real crime drama. There isn't a single one of the heavily clichéd characters in either film who is the least bit believable. Your audience, like mine, is likely to be laughing at -- not with -- STREET KINGS.
The central character is Detective Tom Ludlow (Keanu Reeves). A hard drinking one-man police force, Tom drops by his local liquor store before starting his night's work of killing bad guys and planting guns in crime scenes. He needs his usual stash of little bottles of vodka, so he can down them throughout his tour of duty.
In this canonical crime caper, in which almost every cop is dirty and in which every crime is some elaborate frame job, Tom and his career are protected by his boss, Captain Jack Wander. Academy Award winner Forest Whitaker (THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND) overacts with a vengeance as the duplicitous captain.
Captain Jack's main sparring partner is Hugh Laurie, playing House. Okay, so as Internal Affairs Captain James Biggs, Laurie isn't exactly playing the very popular television character which is his claim to fame, but you'll get the idea. The problem is that Laurie's James is a lame, third-rate knockoff of his deliciously irritating television character. Viewers can see the real thing for free on TV, so why would they want to pay good money to see a bad imitation?
Ah, and then there is the dialog, which is as wooden as any forest you've ever walked through. "Do the department a favor," Jack tells James in what the script thinks is a searing retort. "Wash your mouth out with buckshot." The rest of the dialog -- the film is based on a James Ellroy story -- is just as stiff and stupid.
Graeme Revell's moody and dramatic music keeps suggesting that a much better movie is in progress. As the movie lumbers along, never coming close to finding any rhythm, I took a short bathroom break. The Oscar winning song from ONCE was playing in the restroom. When they sang, "You have suffered enough," I felt like they were talking directly to me. But, like a trooper, I went back and suffered through the rest of this abysmal film, so that you wouldn't have to.
STREET KINGS runs a long 1:49. It is rated R for "strong violence and pervasive language" and would be acceptable for teenagers.
The film opens nationwide in the United States on Friday, April 11, 2008. In the Silicon Valley, it will be showing at the AMC theaters, the Century theaters and the Camera Cinemas.
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