Cinema
Street Kings (15) ***
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| Street Kings: Wooden Keanu risks going up in flames |
WRITER-DIRECTOR David Ayer has certainly found his groove - gritty crime thrillers about morally tainted cops who bend the law to compensate for an imperfect legal system - but he's in danger of getting stuck in it.
Having previously penned screenplays for Training Day, Dark Blue and Harsh Times, making his debut behind the camera with the last film, Ayer returns to the crime-infected streets of Los Angeles with this brutal journey into the city's underbelly.
Renowned novelist James Ellroy (LA Confidential) provides the creative spark for the script, co-written by Kurt Wimmer and Jamie Moss.
However, the set-up and its bloody pay-off are all familiar, even down to the fractious relationship between Forest Whitaker's corrupt mentor and Keanu Reeves' sharp-shooting protégé. The hard-boiled dialogue is suitably snappy ("Do the department a favour and wash your mouth out with buckshot!'') but fails to draw blood in the hands of a cast whose imposing physical presence dwarfs any acting prowess.
Oscar-winner Whitaker relishes his role as the biggest, baddest apple on the top of a rotten barrel, but even his eye-catching performance is table-thumping fury without the emotional firepower.
Street Kings revolves around veteran police Detective Tom Ludlow (Reeves), who is still reeling from the death of his wife, numbing the pain with regular swigs of vodka.
Tom is at the beck and call of his commanding officer (Whitaker), often going undercover to infiltrate crime syndicates then taking the bad guys down with extreme force.
He rarely plays by the rules, making him a prime target for Captain James Biggs (Hugh Laurie) and his colleagues in Internal Affairs.
Ludlow's colleagues in the specialised Ad Vice unit begrudgingly cover for him because results make them all look good - but their patience is wearing thin.
In the aftermath of a shoot-out, Tom learns former partner Washington is planning to rat him out to Biggs.
Soon after, Tom is embroiled in a grocery store hold-up in which Washington is brutally slain and he survives unscathed.
Street Kings is an amalgam of Ayers' earlier films, sparking momentarily to life in the main duo's heated exchange.
"What happened to just locking up bad people?'' asks Tom.
"We're all bad people Tom,'' comes the obvious response.
Laurie's performance is a shadow of his eccentric medic on the hit television series House, and action sequences are competent if uninspired, culminating in a showdown that sees one member of cast being hand-cuffed to the scenery to prevent him chewing it.
See it at Empire, ABC
WIN WIN WIN
IT'S action all the way from Keanu Reeves, Forest Whitaker and Hugh Laurie in Street Kings.
And to celebrate, those lovely folks at 20th Century Fox have given us some special merchandise to give away to readers.
There are five T-shirts, puffa vests and baseball caps to be won.
To enter, simply tell us the name of Keanu Reeves' character in The Matrix. Answer on a postcard to Street Kings Competition, Daily Echo Promotions, Richmond Hill, Bournemouth, BH2 6HH before Friday, April 25. Normal rules apply.
11:34am Friday 18th April 2008
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