Whoa!

Street Kings is yet another near miss movie that is defining the 2008 cinema so far. It could have and should have been good but just didn't quite reach the goals and standards it set for itself.

The tone is set for Street Kings in its opening scene when Keanu Reeves wakes up, looks at himself in the mirror and vomits. This is how we are introduced to LAPD Detective Tom Ludlow, who's been in an alcoholic tailspin since the death of his wife and who is also a Two Fisted Loner Who Sometimes Has To Go Outside The Law etc. Ludlow does his job in a throughly dickish way and manages to make it work due to the fact that his life in controlled by Hollywood screenwriters. The first time we get to see him at work, he tricks a couple of Korean gangsters into leading him back to their evil lair where they are keeping two kidnapped 14 year old girls as sex slaves. Despite the cleverness he showed in the way he found the girls, he then loses his entire IQ when he decides not to call in a SWAT team and instead storm the house alone. Again, he has the luck that only fictional characters can have when he not only single handedly takes out a half dozen gang members but also manages to make it look like he didn't violate several laws and police procedures in doing so.

He gets some help from the other member of his unit, a group somewhat less dickish than he is. His boss, Captain Jack Wander (Forest Whitaker), immediately figures out what happened but helps Ludlow cover it up because he admires Two Fisted Loners Who Sometimes etc. When Ludlow goes to the hospital to get his injuries looked at, we meet Biggs, an Internal Affairs Captain played by Hugh Laurie, whose name may as well be Captain Foreshadow since he tells Ludlow that all the corruption and improper behavior will catch up to him and that, "Someday, you're going to need me." We also meet his girlfriend Grace (what, was Angelica taken?) played by newcomer Martha Hidarega. I think she's a great actress since she manages to convince us that a super sexy Mexican nurse could be in love with a burned out, generally unpleasant alcoholic 20 years older than she is who has no money and lives in a shitty apartment.

The thrust of the story comes when Ludlow comes into conflict with his former partner. Washington, who has decided that he is no longer enamored with Two Fisted Loners Who etc. When Ludlow thinks that Washington is testifying against him about something or other, he follows him to a liquor store to confront him and they wind up having to work together when two gang bangers armed with automatic weapons come in to rob the place. Ludlow does things in his usual dickish way but now the godly screenwriters have decided that the time has come for his luck to run out and he ends up shooting Washington in the back in a friendly fire incident.

This leads us all into a series of circumstances involving unexpected revelations (including how Ludlow's wife died and why it drove him a little nuts), higher and higher levels of police corruption and lots of dead bodies and this all eventually leads to (surprise) Ludlow asking for the help of Captain Foreshadow.

As I said, this is a near miss. The actors, including Keanu Reeves, all manage to do a fairly decent job. I'm convinced that there is more than one Keanu Reeves. There's the good Keanu Reeves who stars in movies like My Own Private Idaho and then there's the bad Keanu Reeves who may not be human at all but instead is a wax statue of Keanu Reeves come to life who makes movies like Constantine. There's also some decent dialogue and interesting plot twists but, in the end, Street Kings just can't overcome the weaknesses of its increasingly improbable story. It might be worth the price of a DVD rental assuming that this is the only movie in the store or on Netflix that you haven't seen.