Street Kings
Source: Globe and Mail (Original Article)
Street Kings
Directed by David Ayer
Written by James Ellroy, Kurt Wimmer and Jamie Moss
Starring Keanu Reeves, Forest Whitaker, Hugh Laurie and Cedric the Entertainer
Classification: 18A
Rating:
S
treet Kings is a bad-cop, worse-cop movie starring Keanu Reeves as a Los Angeles police detective who gargles vodka and sleeps in his uniform. At first, we figure Keanu is the worse cop – burned-out Tom Ludlow would rather murder suspects than take them down to the station. Avoiding paperwork is fine with his commander, Captain Jack Wander (Forest Whitaker), who believes in “exigent” police work. “You’re the tip of the spear, man,” he tells Ludlow.
When Ludlow’s estranged partner – a squeaky-clean crusader – is gunned down, Internal Affairs investigates Wander’s unit. Ludlow is the lead suspect, although the more we see of Capt. Wander, the more we wonder which end of the spear is doing the killing.
Ludlow and Wander’s relationship is similar to Capt. Dudley Smith’s and officer Bud White’s unholy alliance in
L.A. Confidential. No surprise there. James Ellroy wrote the novel
L.A. Confidential, and he provides the original screenplay to
Street Kings.
Twenty years ago, that would have been a good thing. Ellroy’s
L.A. Quartet (1988-92) is one of the best series in the history of crime fiction. Unfortunately, after those four novels, which included
L.A. Confidential, the demon dog of American letters went on to pursue bigger game: the lucrative American underworld where mob soldiers and CIA spooks make a killing. What has followed is a dismal series of novelized he-man events – the Bay of Pigs, the JFK assassination – in a first-grade-reader prose style.
Ellroy is back working the L.A. cop beat interest rate calculator in
Street Kings, but the hairy-chested …continue reading