Film

Street Kings

Cert: 15

Description: Veteran Los Angeles police Detective Tom Ludlow is at the beck and call of his commanding officer, Captain Jack Wander, often going deep undercover to infiltrate crime syndicates then taking the bad guys down with extreme force. Tom rarely plays by the rules, making him a prime target for Captain James Biggs and his colleagues in Internal Affairs. In the aftermath of a shooting, Tom learns that his former partner Detective Terrence 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, rather conveniently, is the only survivor.

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Dir: David Ayer.

Cast: Keanu Reeves, Forest Whitaker, Hugh Laurie, Chris Evans

Country: US.

Year: 2008.

Duration: 108mins

Keanu takes out the trash

Beyond the law: Keanu Reeves (centre)

By Derek Malcolm
17 Apr 2008

James Ellroy once told me he deplored most of the films made from his books, and I don’t think David Ayer’s film about police corruption in LA would change his mind one bit.

It has Keanu Reeves as a cop whose wife has been murdered and who decides to deal with the underworld trash of the City of Angels in wholly illegal ways.

Forest Whitaker is the boss who tries to protect him and has some guilty secrets of his own. Hugh Laurie turns up as the corporate arm of law enforcement and Chris Evans (the American one) is in there pitching, too.

There is absolutely nothing in the film that we haven’t seen somewhere before and hardly any of its cast gives more than perfunctory performances. Efficiently shot as it is on the streets of LA, it’s a bit like one of those thrillers you read on the plane that’s a full class lower than Ellroy’s best work.