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| ‘Street Kings’ fires its guns a bit too high (B-) | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| By Craig Outhier, Get Out | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| April 11, 2008 | ||||||||||||||||||||||
Until the final stretch, anyway, the movie’s potential as a gritty, gnash-and-claw thriller holds up nicely. In his first role since the paranormal pen pal romance “The Lake House” (2006), Keanu Reeves plays Detective Tom Ludlow, the kind of cold-blooded equalizer who can walk into a house full of slave-driving Korean pornographers and efficiently waste them with nary a bullet wound. Far from making him a pariah on the vice squad, Ludlow’s lone-wolf exploits have made him a hero. “L.A.’s deadliest white boy!” Captain Jack Wander (Forest Whitaker) gushes, adding later: “You’re the tip of the spear!” Not all of L.A.’s finest think so highly of Ludlow. His former partner, Washington (Terry Crews, miscast in a nonpsycho role), wonders angrily how the Koreatown crowd will react to his pornographer-killing spree and threatens to snitch. An internal affairs killjoy, Biggs (Hugh Laurie), gives Ludlow the hard sell. When the ex-partner winds up dead, the victim of a grisly murder by masked gangbangers, Ludlow decides to do right by his estranged comrade and mete out some street justice. Strangely, Ludlow is strongly discouraged from doing so by Wander, who usually applauds his protege’s elective police work. And thus Ludlow embarks on a luridly thrilling scavenger hunt through L.A.’s criminal underworld. Joined by a still-green homicide detective (Chris Evans from “The Fantastic Four”), Ludlow will chop his way past all manner of thug, pimp and peddler — including a gentleman we humorously find pouring malt liquor over his morning Fruit Loops. (The supporting cast is downright gaudy, including Cedric the Entertainer, Jay Mohr, Common and The Game.) The hard-boiled dialogue, by Ellroy and co-screenwriter Kurt Wimmer (“Equilibrium”), is perversely entertaining, too. “Why don’t you do the force a favor and gargle with buckshot?” Wander tells the I.A. guy. The bad thing about “Street Kings”: It takes Ludlow the better part of two hours to find out what we guessed about the culprits from the get-go, affording Ayers — in his directorial follow-up to the Iraq vet cautionary drama “Harsh Times” (2005) — too many opportunities to cloud motivations and overcook oratory (Whitaker’s especially). And why would Ludlow’s girlfriend (Martha Higareda) wait until the last reel to give him the “Why can’t you just be normal” routine? What, you’re dating an alcoholic one-man killing machine, and you just now found this out? In telling the story of a conflicted cop, do the filmmakers suffer the same fate? Sure, they know to tsk-tsk Ludlow’s radical disdain for due process, but they also seem titillated by the idea of a white, law-flouting street commando who shoots first, pummels with a phone book second and, maybe, asks questions third. That’s just too much complexity for this kind of movie. MOVIE REVIEW — ‘Street Kings’ Cast: Keanu Reeves, Forest Whitaker, Hugh Laurie, Chris Evans Behind the scenes: Directed by David Ayer, from a script by James Ellroy and Kurt Wimmer Rated: R (strong violence and pervasive profanity), 109 minutes Grade: B- Contact Craig Outhier by email, or phone (480) 898-5683 |
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