Don’t get me wrong. Street Kings clips along with brutal efficiency, but the plot that sets up Tom for a frame-up is, in critic parlance, a strain on credulity.
Comment
04/10/08
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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
We see the big picture way before the characters do, and that pushes us right out of the movie and back into our seats -- the last place we want to be.
04/10/08
It does provide a compelling, edgy ride around the underbelly of life, worth the trip to bask in the tough-guy bloodshed and bullet-riddled nightlife of Los Angeles.
04/10/08
..a slam-bang, violent, profane, non-stop action police thriller.
04/10/08
Working from an original story by [James] Ellroy, [David] Ayer's overwrought Kings splashes around in the slop, but its conclusions seem a little rote from these two, who have both expressed their bottomless cynicism more effectively in the past.
04/10/08
Laid-back actor Reeves is thoroughly unconvincing, and so is the film as a direct result.
04/10/08
It's a story that has been played out more times than can be counted and is none too fresh on this go-round. Street Kings simply brings nothing new to the 'bad cop' subgenre.
04/10/08
In Ellroy's original scenario Street Kings was a period piece, set in the 1990s just after the Rodney King riots. I wonder if it would've made more sense that way.
04/10/08
Fast-moving and gritty and more interested in bullet-riddled genre conventions than the fear and danger that pushes honest people over the edge.
04/10/08
This film has Eric Roberts and Don 'The Dragon' Wilson straight-to-DVD written all over it.
04/10/08
Street Kings has a brisk pace and performers who look as though they wish they had brighter things to say.
04/10/08
Street Kings proves to be as standard-issue as much of the gear assigned to real police officers ... and this familiarity often numbs the picture's effectiveness.
04/10/08
David Ayer, who wrote Training Day, directs with enough flash to keep the action crisp and nasty. But he can't swagger his way through Ellroy's swampy storyline, which traps its characters in cynicism and amorality.
04/10/08
There's something cynical about Ayers' attempt to preserve Ludlow as a hero after scene upon scene meant to show, with heavy irony, how lawlessly he enforced the law.
04/10/08
"A wearying exercise in manufactured grittiness."
04/10/08
James Ellroy wrote the script; he also wrote the novel on which L.A. Confidential was based. If you're hoping for a similar intelligence, you're out of luck.
04/10/08
Among dirty-cop actioners...hardly royalty; despite the title, it's more like a pretender to the throne. But like Reeves's Ludlow, it gets the job done.
04/10/08
A police thriller that’s desperate to be gritty, Street Kings boasts a protagonist so dumb it takes him an hour of screen time to realize a 'plot twist' we assumed was a given.
04/10/08
Despite the predictability of the overall story arc, there's suspense and tension to be found between the credit sequences, but the movie is saddled with an ending that is both improbable and borderline insulting.
04/10/08
If you completely ignore the fact it's ludicrous and the twists are spelled out hours in advance, then it's not a total waste of time.
04/09/08
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.
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April 23, 2008:
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April 17, 2008:
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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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