This week’s movie review is “Street Kingsâ€, a movie about cops who go beyond the boundaries of right and wrong to bring down bad guys. In the movie Keanu Reeves plays Detective Tom Ludlow, a cop who uses whatever means possible to go after bad guys and then kill them, instead of wasting time arresting them and sending them through the judicial system. He is very good at what he does, and always makes it look like an legitimate reason for having killed the suspects. Keeping him from ever getting into trouble for his methods is his Captain, Jack Wander played by Forest Whitaker. Captain Wander loves what his star detective does because it always brings his department praise for taking the worst of the worst criminals off the streets. All is good in the department until an ex-partner of Tom’s, Detective Terrence Washington played by Terry Crews starts to talk with an Internal Affairs Captain named James Biggs played by Hugh Laurie. Soon Detective Washington is gunned down execution style in a grocery store as Tom is also there to confront Washington on rumors that he is talking to the IA Captain about him. After this the story gets very interesting as it starts to unfold that Tom’s whole department might be keeping secrets from him.
Tom teams up with Washington’s last partner Detective Paul Diskant played by Chris Evans to track down the men who gunned down Washington in an attempt to get the real truth as to why he was killed. As he digs deeper, he soon finds out that Washington’s murder is just a piece in a way larger puzzle. This movie is entertaining as far as bad cop movies go, but the script is kind of weak, and you kind of know all along who is at the top of this whole conspiracy as it starts to unfold. I know that this movie was sitting on Fox Picture’s self some where, I just couldn’t figure out why it was put out in the movies, and not straight to DVD. I guess when you have a movie with so many known actors, you want to try and get some box office sells, to go along with whatever it may make when it comes to DVD. Just to name some of the other actors in this movie, and no part went to an unknown, here are some of the others: Jay Mohr, John Corbett, Cedric the Entertainer, Clifton Powell, Naomie Harris, Amaury Nolasco, Common, and The Game. They had no choice but to put this movie out, a lot of checks had to be paid. I will give this movie 1 and ½ cops out of 4, just on the action alone.
The story was a little to easy to figure out, and some of the acting was way over the top, even in Academy Award winner Forest Whitakers performance. The movie ran 1 hr, and 47mins. It was rated R for strong violence, and pervasive language. It was distributed by Fox searchlight Pictures, and was directed by David Ayer. The movie also went through so many writers; you would have thought they could have put out a better finished product. In all this script went through 7 different writers and not one of them was able to do it justice.
Life is a movie, be a Star. Ezo
