Bad cops are a staple in cinema. They always have been and most likely always will be. I have always enjoyed watching the anti-hero cop walk the line of morality in movies. I am fascinated by the idea of someone in power abusing it to personal gains, but still finding time to kill the bad guys. See, in real life I believe in the system of trials and whatnot, but in the movies, I kind of dig that rogue cop doctoring a crime scene to make a murder look justifiable. A part of me thinks anyone who has raped a young girl deserves death before a trial. I know it isn't very liberal thinking of me, but deal with it. I say all of this because, well Street Kings is a bad cop movie.
Anytime a guy wakes up and the first two things he does are put a magazine in his gun and vomit into the toilet, you know the guy might have issues. Such is the case for detective Tom Ludlow(Keanu Reeves). He also buys individual bottles of Vodka and downs them while driving on the job. However, he is the last of the gun-slingers in Southern California. He is the last of the men who would do anything to get the job done. He is not above putting guns in dead perps' hands to make it look like he was fired on. He does what he has to do. Luckily for him he has a whole team of people backing him up including his captain, Jack Wander(Forrest Whitaker). His antics have put him on the radar of the rat squad(a bad cop movie staple). Captain James Biggs(Dr. House) runs the rat squad and he always seems to appear just in time to remind Ludlow what he is doing. Ludlow gets the impression his former partner was ratting him out, so Ludlow follows him to give him a beat down, but instead the two cops end up in a store that is about to be robbed. The two cops try and shoot their way out, but Ludlow's former partner gets bullets unloaded into his body by the dozen and the surveillance camera captures it and it looks as if Ludlow just let it happen. The detective who picks up the case of the dead detective is Paul Diskant(Chris Evans) and soon he and Ludlow are the track of two brutal killers. All the while, there is some serious cop corruption going on that Ludlow appears to be in the middle of.
James Ellroy, who is a whiz at bad cop stories, wrote a very great script and put it in the hands of a director who is also a whiz at writing bad cop stories. With their combined bad cop story skills Street Kings has a lot of flavor, action and menacing cop stuff. It also has what is probably the best type of role for Keanu Reeves- Stoic and laconic. Chris Evans is playing a version of a character he so often plays, but since he does it so well, I was not annoyed and it was nice to see Dr. House doing something other than being a sarcastic grinch. Whitaker though takes the cake, as usual. His method of falling completely into a role no matter what is consistently mesmerizing, but he has a tendency to make other actors look bad when forced into scenes with them, see the climax of this movie with Reeves as an example. Even though it comes in at around two hours, the story never lags and while the twist may seem like a "well DUH!" moment it doesn't take away from the enjoyment of the movie. But not only is the whole thing intense it has some pretty funny moments as well. At the beginning there some nice banter about race and some very politically incorrect jokes that have been missing from the cop films of late. Street Kings plays very much like a throw back bad cop movie.
Ellroy has also proven himself the master of possible non-sequitors and this exchange might be the best one I have heard in a long ass time:
Ludlow: We are the only two who can know about this.
Diskan: That's why we are in the men's room.
Now it may not seem entirely non-sequitor because it somewhat makes sense that two cops who are trying to do something off the books would be alone somewhere, but when you watch the movie it feels very much like "Where the hell is the connection" moment and is what makes this movie much better than it could have or should have been. There are other great exchanges, but I can't find the script on-line to pull them from and I cannot very well take a pen and paper and write them all down, so you'll have to trust me. James Ellroy and David Ayer collaborated on a screenplay before and the result was only sub par but here they really get it right. I know the movie looks like a rip off of something like Training Day, but if you watch the movie you will See it isn't. The twist kind of helps to prove that.
Street Kings takes a character and lets us watch him as he walks the line of doing the right thing the wrong way and just doing the wrong thing. We see a very flawed character with a sense of honor and duty, but going about it in some seriously twisted ways and I think movies like that are interesting. Reeves' Ludlow is not the animal from Training Day because he ultimately wants to do the right thing. Street Kings is flawed like it's hero, but like the hero it finds a way to be good regardless. The climax might seem a little from out of left field and the stolen money might be hidden in the worst possible place, but when the movie ends you are still left like "Damn, I wonder what decision I would have made" and that is awesome.
Final Grade: B+
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