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- Movie Review: Street Kings
Movie Review: Street Kings
- By Dave Urbanski
- Published 05/29/2008
- Movie Reviews
- Unrated
Dave Urbanski
Dave Urbanski is author of The Man Comes Around: The Spiritual Journey of Johnny Cash (Relevant Books), senior developmental editor for Youth Specialties, and writes about music, film, and culture for several publications.
View all articles by Dave UrbanskiR, 108 min.
Near the end of this bloody piece of celluloid, when wickedly conflicted vice detective Tom Ludlow (Keanu Reeves) asks his aptly named boss, Capt. Jack Wander (Forest Whitaker), “What happened to just locking up the bad people?” Wander responds with a little dose of Romans 3:10: “We’re all bad, Tom.” That’s the essence of Street Kings, a dark-cop flick sprung from the dark-cop minds of writer James Ellroy (L.A. Confidential) and director David Ayer (Training Day).
Reeve’s character is “the tip of the spear” of a four-man unit (filled out by John Corbett and Jay Mohr, who could play slimy in his sleep) that breaks as many laws as it enforces. Complicating matters is the flinty internal affairs captain, played quite House-like by Hugh Laurie, who’s a rival of Whitaker’s Wander and is on to the M.O. of Ludlow & Co. Twists and turns ensue as the line between cop and criminal becomes gossamer thin.
Street Kings demonstrates a few things quite well: 1) Enforcing the law by breaking it, while often an effective short-term measure to keep certain criminal elements at bay, doesn’t necessarily work in the long run; 2) Power corrupts; 3) Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Language and carnage make Street Kings a movie you shouldn’t use as the centerpiece of a youth group trip to the local cineplex—although with Reeves in the lead, Cedric the Entertainer as a snitch, and hip-hop artists Common and the Game as bad guys, you won’t keep kids from the box office very easily. Instead rent Street Kings when it releases to DVD in a few months, and—providing you choose scenes judiciously—you could have some good discussion-starter material on your hands.
Two scenes in particular are worth mentioning. The first is the climactic truth-telling sequence between Reeves and Whitaker at the movie’s conclusion (referenced in the lead of this review, it’s a microcosm of all the movie’s dark themes). The second is between Reeves and the widow of a former partner who died in a hail of bullets in the midst of exposing corruption—the widow’s words speak great truth regarding the futility of violence as means to an end.
Reeve’s character is “the tip of the spear” of a four-man unit (filled out by John Corbett and Jay Mohr, who could play slimy in his sleep) that breaks as many laws as it enforces. Complicating matters is the flinty internal affairs captain, played quite House-like by Hugh Laurie, who’s a rival of Whitaker’s Wander and is on to the M.O. of Ludlow & Co. Twists and turns ensue as the line between cop and criminal becomes gossamer thin.
Street Kings demonstrates a few things quite well: 1) Enforcing the law by breaking it, while often an effective short-term measure to keep certain criminal elements at bay, doesn’t necessarily work in the long run; 2) Power corrupts; 3) Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Language and carnage make Street Kings a movie you shouldn’t use as the centerpiece of a youth group trip to the local cineplex—although with Reeves in the lead, Cedric the Entertainer as a snitch, and hip-hop artists Common and the Game as bad guys, you won’t keep kids from the box office very easily. Instead rent Street Kings when it releases to DVD in a few months, and—providing you choose scenes judiciously—you could have some good discussion-starter material on your hands.
Two scenes in particular are worth mentioning. The first is the climactic truth-telling sequence between Reeves and Whitaker at the movie’s conclusion (referenced in the lead of this review, it’s a microcosm of all the movie’s dark themes). The second is between Reeves and the widow of a former partner who died in a hail of bullets in the midst of exposing corruption—the widow’s words speak great truth regarding the futility of violence as means to an end.
