Untitled Document
Is Keanu Reeves a good actor? Well, the jury’s
still out, as far as I’m concerned. In the right role, he’s as
effective as any big Hollywood star. There’s no doubt that The Matrix doesn’t work
without him, but in other features, such as Chain
Reaction and Sweet
November, Reeves is as wooden as a Louisville
Slugger — so you have to give him credit for trying something new in
David Ayer’s Street Kings, a raw urban thriller that casts the actor as a cop so
crooked he makes Dirty Harry look like a Girl Scout. It’s an
effective change of pace for him, and he rises to challenge, painting an
effective portrait of a man so morally corrupt that you wonder whether
redemption is even an option.
How bad is Det. Tom Ludlow (Reeves)? Well, he has no
problem planting evidence, taking payoffs, or trampling all over
people’s civil rights as long as he brings the bad guys to justice.
His immediate superior, Capt. Jack Wander (Forest Whitaker), willingly
turns a blind eye to Ludlow’s activities and those of his corrupt
partners Sgt. Mike Clady and Det. Cosmo Santos (Jay Mohr and Amaury
Nolasco) as long as they get results, and they do. However, too many
questions about his unit’s investigative techniques are being raised.
Capt. Jack Biggs (Hugh Laurie, in a nice wry turn) of Internal Affairs is
aggressively pursuing Wander and his unit, and Ludlow’s former
partner Terrence Washington (Terry Crews) is cooperating with him to bring
down every dirty cop he knows. However, when two gangbangers take
Washington out at a liquor store where Ludlow just happens to be, the
coincidence is too odd to be ignored, especially when a slug pulled from
the victim’s corpse is matched to Ludlow’s gun. The investigation into this killing reveals multiple
levels of deceit and corruption as the officer assigned to solve
Washington’s murder, Det. Paul Diskant (Chris Evans), turns a blind
eye to Ludlow’s involvement in the shooting. However, the corrupt
officer feels a sense of duty toward his ex-partner after meeting with his
widow, and soon Ludlow and Diskant are working to solve a case that winds
up being just a cover-up for an even larger crime. This is familiar territory for Ayer. A former
screenwriter, his scripts include those for Dark
Blue, Training Day, and Harsh Times, all featuring cops on the take and their days of
reckoning. Although the director did not have a hand in the writing of the Kings script (that job went
to James Ellroy, Kurt Wimmer, and Jamie Moss), he’s able to produce
the sort of grittiness that this tale requires. With his cinematographer,
Gabriel Beristain, Ayer gives the film a look of grime and sweat; the Los
Angeles streets are coated with dirt and pollution and each character seems
to be on the verge of breaking into a sweat at any given moment. Equally
impressive is the way in which Ayer stages the film’s action
sequences. In an age in which filmmakers confuse rapid editing and quick
camera moves for action, we get hardboiled sequences that don’t
scrimp on the violence or the excitement as the director relies on solid
blocking, camera moves, and sharp cutting. No motion sickness to be had
here — simply good old-fashioned, albeit bloody, movie action. The film’s biggest problem is that it covers
familiar territory. If you’ve seen a couple of
double-crossing-dirty-cop movies, then chances are you’ll be able to
pinpoint Kings’
true bad guys before you get into the film’s second hour. Equally
troubling are the circumstances surrounding Washington’s death, which
are far too fantastic to be believed and far too convenient to be credible.
Still, Ayer’s rapid pacing and solid work by the
cast distract us from the script’s shortcomings. Whitaker is
effective as a man who no longer can distinguish between right and wrong.
Laurie is great fun with his bulldog tenacity, as is Evans, who’s
always engaging thanks to his boyish charm. As for Reeves, he goes all out,
suggesting a more promising future if he continues to live on the edge as
he does here.
This article appears in Apr 3-9, 2008.
