Now that he is entering middle age and has packed on a few extra pounds ... I can buy Keanu Reeves as a haggard, broken down LAPD veteran ...
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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
There's a lot to appreciate in Street Kings, a tight, propulsive action thriller, but there's one thing to marvel at, and that's James Ellroy's command of story.
04/11/08
Click to read the article
04/11/08
...a decent enough police drama... If only we hadn't seen it so many times before... in better movies than this.
04/11/08
The James Ellroy that I know and admire wouldn't concoct a storyline that is so crashingly obvious that virtually every member of the audience will have sussed out who is at the bottom of the conspiracy at least an hour before it finally dawns on our hero
04/11/08
Street Kings spends two hours unraveling a mystery that anyone with half a brain figured out mere minutes into the first act.
04/11/08
Street Kings wastes a better than expected turn by Keanu Reeves. That means he never says the word 'dude' or breaks into a mean air guitar riff.
04/10/08
The film is undone by a story that manages to be both implausible and overly familiar. We've seen all of this before -- and we didn't buy it then, either.
04/10/08
Street Kings doesn't stack up against Ayer's earlier works, but for basic thrills and grand-scale dramatics, it's thoroughly involving.
04/10/08
Despite only sharing credit as a co-writer, the story has Ellroy's fingerprints all over it and those familiar smudges become a detriment to an otherwise well-made film by director David Ayer.
04/10/08
a familiar story of corrupt cops running amok, but it never rises above the obvious.
04/10/08
...Street Kings ultimately comes off as an irrisistible throwback to the unapologetically over-the-top actioners of the 1980s.
04/10/08
"Street Kings" is a like a Cliff's Notes version of Training Day not that Training Day was any special challenge to the mental muscle. Corruption is bad, we get it.
04/10/08
For Street Kings, being an above-average example of an overused idea is not necessarily a bad thing.
04/10/08
Ranging from pretty preposterous to laughably bad, Street Kings is a silly and sappy melodrama that plays like an unintentional parody of old crime shows.
04/10/08
James Ellroy's satisfyingly solid and complex story makes a powerful structure for David Ayer's film of corrupt cops and their milieu, with the violence balanced by characterisation
04/10/08
That Ellroy delivers a crude, undistinguished script here is a pity.
04/10/08
Street Kings is an absurd if accidentally entertaining potboiler, based on a story by James Ellroy.
04/10/08
Top CriticMuch of the casting is dead-on, from Cedric the Entertainer as a street dealer to Jay Mohr as a slimy cop and Chris Evans as an earnest rookie who saddles up with Reeves' Ludlow for an ill-fated ride.
04/10/08
If you can get past Keanu as a tough guy and you're an action fan, you'll appreciate the lurid grandeur of the hard-charging Street Kings.
04/10/08
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:
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April 17, 2008:
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