Crooked cops, airport vodka and Keanu

As preparation for seeing The Day the Earth Stood Still I thought I’d set myself by seeing Street Kings, the other Keanu Reeves movie of 2008. Big mistake. Clichés, gratuity and a script as underdeveloped as it is poorly written run the show here. The storyline is completely uninteresting and predictable, and the ‘twist’ at the end of the film, as well as the strange moral epilogue that follows is painfully bad. There’s nothing royal about Street Kings

Detective Tom Ludlow (Keanu Reeves) is one badass motherfucker. He’s a hothead racist cop that knows no rules or limitations. He is also Captain Jack Wander’s (Forest Whitaker) mercenary. In the name of efficiency Wander sends Ludlow out on missions to kill criminals in cold blood then plant evidence to make it look like lethal force was necessary. Corruption is the name of the game - a good deal of Ludlow’s peers are fully aware of what is going on and more than willing to turn a blind eye. Things go pear-shaped though when Ludlow’s ex-partner Washington (Terry Crews) is murdered in a convenience store with Ludlow present. Ludlow becomes a suspect, and things become even more complicated when he finds out Washington was speaking with Captain Briggs (Hugh Laurie) of Internal Affairs, seemingly ratting him out. What follows is some telephone-book and shovel smacking violence as well as a disastrous web of corruption and back-stabbing.

There are two types of characters that Keanu Reeves can play well. Icy cool leather clad action heroes (The Matrix, Constantine) and offbeat and likable characters (Bill and Ted, Feeling Minnesota). The exception to this rule is when Keanu does his absolute best to succeed at the role, throws everything into it and it comes out in a wonderful jumble. See: Point Break and The Devil’s Advocate. Unfortunately Street Kings gives us cruise control wooden Keanu, who isn’t even unintentionally funny. He’s just plain bad. Keanu is over-the-top and a complete mismatch for his character. Perhaps the highlight of the film comes when Keanu, of Asian heritage no less, goes on a racist rant against a pair of Korean gangsters. It’s ridiculous. And he doesn’t seem like he even cares. But honestly who can blame him when you look at the mess the rest of this film is.

Not all films need to have strong themes, morals and messages. I’m fine settling on occasion for something with an interesting narrative and good characters. Unfortunately Street Kings is 0-for-everying. I’m still not sure what this film is about. It flirts with ideas of alcoholism, loss, racism, revenge, loyalty and ultimately the power of secrets. Nothing is explored, everything is dealt with superficially. The storyline is no more impressive. Fifteen minutes in I was already anticipating this film’s ultimate villain and the ‘climatic’ final scene which would come in turn. These aren’t my incredulous skills of narrative deduction, no, this is just common sense.

With a relatively impressive cast and a decent author upon which the story is based I expected much greater things from Street Kings. The best I can say about it is that it’s a very poor man’s L.A. Confidential. A homeless man’s L.A. Confidential maybe is more apt. It’s not as boring as The Black Dahlia, but it’s a hell of a lot less visually impressive. It comes down to this; Street Kings does a lot of things badly, and nothing in particular good. And generally that formula never leads to a decent film. Generally.