Street Kings wobbles increasingly as it runs along, beginning well, growing so-so and culminating in a preposterous here's-what-it-all-means confession by the main villain.
Comment
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
Ayer continues to milk his street cred for writing Training Day, this time adapting a James Ellroy story into a grimy copy of Ellroy's L.A. Confidential.
04/11/08
The picture may feel more than a little familiar, but [director] Ayer knows how to cook up intense setpieces, and Reeves keeps getting better at the weary hero role he continually gravitates toward.
04/11/08
Just a lot of huffing and puffing … and nothing blows you away.
04/11/08
Like so many thrillers with crooked moral backbones, Street Kings glamourizes the very behaviour it's condemning, lest audiences get bored by too much talk and not enough killing.
04/11/08
Fans of Keanue Reeves and Forest Whitaker will appreciate Reeves' heavy screen time and Whitaker's performance, but both actors deserve material that doesn't leave the viewer queasy and in need of a long shower.
04/11/08
An anemic attempt to evoke the big, shiny action pictures of the late '80s and early '90s, the heyday of Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger, when Timothy Dalton was 007 and Clint Eastwood had fewer wrinkles and bigger hair.
04/11/08
Top CriticIf you've seen Training Day, you've seen Street Kings done better.
04/11/08
Street Kings has hints of Training Day and the subtle aroma of L.A. Confidential, two movies concerned with the moral ambiguity and compromised honor of L.A.'s finest.
04/11/08
Street Kings is the cinematic equivalent of solid crime-genre fiction. It keeps the visual pages turning for a couple hours and navigates the dark corners of corruption and dishonor among men.
04/11/08
Street Kings is buoyed by the spirit of Keanu Reeves, who never fails to astound, at least this critic, by being consistently better than he’s given credit for and nearly always better than most of the films in which he appears.
04/11/08
[Director] Ayer appears to like the thrill of violence more than its philosophical underpinnings, so the movie is caught between the silly and the profound.
04/11/08
It would be easier to take as gory, lowdown fun if it weren't giving you the third degree in more ways than one.
04/11/08
While it is not quite of the same caliber as L. A. Confidential and Dark Blue, it works well enough as a standard meat-and-potatoes example of its genre.
04/11/08
What drags the film down, and in the end sinks it, is its unimaginatively complete grimness and cynicism.
04/11/08
There's something to be said for being entertained for two hours (even if it's a guilty pleasure), something not a lot of 2008 movies have been able to pull off.
04/11/08
On top of bad casting decisions, hackneyed dialogue and so much machismo it would make Mister Furley blush, the film loses sight of all the issues it brings up.
04/11/08
By the gripping finale, it's clear that Street Kings is implausible in its practicalities, if not in its grand concept
04/11/08
...risible dialogue, obvious 'twists' and a bad Forrest Whitaker performance.
04/11/08
I was halfway expecting Leslie Nielsen to make a cameo appearance as the coroner.
04/11/08
Latest News for Street Kings
August 16, 2008:
Another wooden performance from Keanu Reeves in high-impact splatter flick. 
More...
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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