Street Kings

After its clichéd first scene - a solo LAPD officer battling a well-armed gang of thugs - Street Kings becomes an enjoyably tough, blood-splattered action drama that revolves around the one good cop at its center.

It’s easy to laugh at Street Kings for its bigger than big emotions, its preposterously kinky narrative turns and overwrought jawing and yowling, but there’s no doubt that it also keeps you watching, really watching, all the way to the end.

Street Kings is nonsense, and yet the crooked, racialized world underneath the soulless mayhem is pretty fascinating.

See it with people who take it for the trash it is, and you can cheer the baroque killings and laugh fondly with Forest Whitaker as he tries too hard to create a domestic sociopath to match his role as "Idi Amin."

It preserves the peculiar machismo of Ayer's earlier projects: the alpha male dominates not only because he's the most powerful, but because he's the most jaded.

I enjoyed parts of Street Kings but I didn’t believe one thing about it, and I couldn’t get past Reeves’ unsuitability to his role. He may someday play a cop on the edge convincingly, but the edge needs to be sharper than this.

Two things come to mind as you watch the first act of Street Kings, the first is how fresh and exciting the movie would’ve been if it was released in 1984, the second is the question, “James Ellroy wrote that?”

'Street Kings' is certainly a cut above most other gritty cop dramas, hardly surprising since it was written by James Elroy, the master of the genre. If you haven't read 'American Tabloid', go out and get it. I'd say it's genre defining, it's that good. Like many like all the big Hollywood stars, Keanu almost always plays himself, which serves him well playing edgy, emotionally spent Detective Tom Ludlow. Forest Whitaker is absolutely brilliant, probably the best role he's had since 'Ghost Dog'. He's fantastic to watch in the riveting, final scene, I think there's great chemistry between Whitaker and Reeves. I loved the snappy, 'street jive' type dialogue, and much of the story is quite believable, if somewhat convoluted, but never contrived or boring. Like another reviewer said, I think it sort of comes together a bit quick at the end, I would've enjoyed another 20 mins to flesh the story out a bit more. Hey, I could watch this stuff all day, it's that good. Yet again, the critics are clueless, 'Street Kings' is a really entertaining film, highly recommended.

Entertaining action thriller with a stellar cast and production value follows a trail of bodies left by reeves jaded character as he navigates a corrupt police unit's empire mid collapse. There's only a few surprises to be found here but it sure was a fun ride.

Street Kings a predictable and sometimes boring action movie with a great cast of actors. The characters are mostly stereotypical, Tom Ludlow is a good protagonist, but doesn't offer anything new or exciting. The dialogues are not bad, but there's nothing that stands out. The plot is predictable, but still enjoyable. A few characters' intentions were not clear by the end, that was confusing. The cinematography was terrible. The slow motions were boring and some of the shots were really weird. The fight scenes were also badly-shot and edited, because I couldn't see anything. The pacing was okay, I wasn't bored because of it. The lack of excitement comes from the predictable story and the stereotypical characters. Street Kings is not a movie I'll rewatch, but it was exactly the kind of goofy action movie I wanted to see.

I agree that its an underrated film but critics but its not that good. Solid acting and Reeves is a good lead for the film. However the script is really all over the place and it never really hits as it should have, In fact its actually a bit confusing at times because you dont know where they are gonna go with it. Overall, It was a solid action flick but thats about it.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]