Street Kings: L.A. Confidential on Viagra!

Keanu Reeves delivers the worst performance of his career in this new Thriller / Crime-Drama from David Ayer. It's really distracting to have the main actor not giving it the best up there on screen, it translates into not giving a flying fuck about the character and hoping that he buys it in some "everybody dies" scenario as in The Departed or something. Can we really blame him or is it the fault of inexperienced director Ayer? Well you be the judge when you see how good Forest Whitaker, Hugh Laurie (complete with House yank accent) and even Chris Evans are in their respective roles.

It may come as no surprise to anyone watching this movie, that it's written by James Ellroy, the acclaimed novelist behind L.A. Confidential. It may also dawn on people that Mr. Ellroy is a one-trick-pony as there are many elements of his previous works on display here. This time however the corrupt cop genre has been given a boost with some real edgy dialog and fantastic action set-pieces. The latter element there would no doubt be the result of additional screenplay input by the excellent Kurt Wimmer of Equilibrium and Ultraviolet fame. As mentioned, the movie is directed by David Ayer who is more credited as a writer of S.W.A.T., Dark Blue and Training Day which strangely enough ALL heavily feature corrupt cops too! I think even Ayer's choice of composer in Graeme Revell was most likely for his ability to score movies about corrupt cops as he did a good job of adapting some of his previous scores from Assault on Precinct 13 and The Negotiator for this movie.

There is this one part in the movie that I must mention because it should be shocking, but ends up being fucking hilarious. A character gets gunned down by two bad guys with (what look like MK 760) machine guns. About 100 9mm bullets end up lodging in or going through the poor guy, his chest cavity is a gaping hole and he has several wounds in his head, there is little of him left - but in true Hollywood fashion: He's still breathing when his assailants leave. Keanu finds him, bends over and says "Stay With Me!". It's just too funny. It's actually in the trailer below, have a look.

Brian Holcomb of Beyond Hollywood said that "..movies like Street Kings are sitting ducks in a shooting range for film critics who laugh all through the movie only to condemn it for being so damn entertaining." And this is true; Despite it's flaws the movie is most certainly entertaining and enjoyable, even if it does add to a somewhat disheartening portrait of the LAPD, ironically painted by the very people they're sworn to serve and protect.

Colonel Creedon Rating: ****

WARNING: RED-BAND Trailer (Scenes of extreme violence)