Street Kings, unlike the recent cop drama Gone Baby Gone, feels like it slid out of a police precinct file cabinet and slapped itself on a movie screen.
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04/11/08
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Street Kings (2008)
37
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:147
Fresh:54
Rotten:93
Average Rating:5.1/10
Consensus: Street Kings contains formulaic violence but no shred of intelligence.
Rated: 15 [See Full Rating]
Genre: Dramas
Theatrical Release:18-04-2008
Synopsis: In STREET KINGS, a police thriller directed by David Ayer, Keanu Reeves plays Tom Ludlow, a veteran LAPD Vice Detective. Ludlow sets out on a quest to discover the killers of his former partner,... [More]
Starring: Keanu Reeves, Hugh Laurie, Chris Evans, Forest Whitaker
Director: David Ayer
Reviews for Street Kings
Disposable crime flick.
04/11/08
Another 'roid-raging dirty cop drama from David Ayer.
04/11/08
The film makes the point that this is the only way to really save people from evil, so it can't very well expect us to spend the next 80 minutes watching him play by the rules.
04/11/08
[James Ellroy] writes Calvinist screeds against sin; filmmakers turn them into shoot-em-up thrillers.
04/11/08
Just another dumb shoot 'em up.
04/11/08
Ayer keeps upping the ante, to the point where finally you go, "Okay, NOW this [stuff] they're doing is definitely unacceptable."
04/11/08
Street Kings wastes a moderately intriguing premise by filling it with laughably clichéd dialogue, one-dimensional characters and implausible turns of events.
04/11/08
Everything that worked brilliantly in L.A. Confidential and Dark Blue falls flat here.
04/11/08
The movie belongs to Reeves, who at 43 is finally starting to look like an adult, with greater heft all round. He does Clint proud.
04/11/08
Street Kings is a lean, energetic film that takes us through increasingly brutal scenes until it climaxes with a burst of violence so baroque and intense that you're not sure which part of the screen you're supposed to be looking at.
04/11/08
The charisma of its cast should be included amid its bloody body count. It's hard to know what anyone saw in this particular dirty-cop tale co-written by James Ellroy. It's not "The Black Dahlia." It's "The Black Duh-lia.
04/11/08
The potential match made in crime heaven has some admirably gritty action but suffers from first-degree obviousness and some bad dialogue that's especially painful when it comes out of Keanu Reeves.
04/11/08
The Keanu Reeves cop movie Street Kings is a viscerally compelling but thematically confused mess of an action noir that plumbs new depths of cynicism about contemporary American life in general and the Los Angeles Police Department in particular.
04/11/08
A B-level cop thriller with an A-list cast, Street Kings engages when taken on its own, trashy terms. But even at that, the film provokes unintentional laughter.
04/11/08
Keanu Reeves tries his best to channel Denzel and Clint in Street Kings, a wild and woolly if also slack and silly bad-cops-kill-other-bad-cops thriller.
04/11/08
Hey, Hollywood: When somebody dreams up a dumb idea, you're allowed to say 'no.'
04/11/08
...observes many of the conventions of corrupt-cop movies...
04/11/08
Like director David Ayer's previous movies (he wrote Training Day), Street Kings is about the joy of badass coppery.
04/11/08
After its clichéd first scene Street Kings becomes an enjoyably tough, blood-splattered action drama that revolves around the one good cop at its center.
04/11/08
Latest News for Street Kings
August 16, 2008:
Another wooden performance from Keanu Reeves in high-impact splatter flick. 
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August 08, 2008:
While military man turned director Ayer implicates our culture steeped in violence and the damaging effects of trained killing, whether by police or in war, he's assembled such a deplorable LAPD rogues gallery, it's hard to tell which one is the worst.
More...
April 23, 2008:
UK Box Office Breakdown: Craig's Fool Has Disasterous Opening
Daniel Craig's new film - Flashbacks of a Fool - suffers a disastrous opening weekend, coming in at only 11th in the charts. Fool's Gold and Happy Go Lucky are the big successes More...
April 17, 2008:
Box Office Guru Preview: Chan & Li Face Off Against Sarah Marshall
After four straight weeks of the box office falling significantly behind last year's pace, the marketplace is finally set to post a win thanks to a trio of new releases... More...
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