When you combine the corruption-obsessed mind of James Ellroy with the bleak outlook of David Ayer, you’re certain to get a fair amount of urban chaos. After all, Ellory’s track record of penning brutal tomes include all-time greats like L.A. Confidential, American Tabloid and White Jazz, and Ayer was still white hot after writing Training Day. This means that both have delivered works obsessed with morally compromised anti-heroes and near apocalyptic levels of police corruption that, gave us the murderously iconic likes of Alonzo Harris and Dudley Smith.
However, while the two purveyors of urban misery seemed to have merged interests, for only his second film Ayer had given himself something of a near insurmountable task that goes beyond trying to adapt the author’s, complex, misanthropic works for the screen. He had to get Keanu Reeves (aka. Hollywood’s nicest man) to portray a complete and utter bastard…
Thomas Ludlow is a detective for the LAPD’s Vice-Special unit who spends his spare time waking up in the afternoon, getting blasted on miniature bottles of vodka and has an alarming side hustle performing above-the-law acts of vigilantism in order to ensure that the scumbags his unit are tracking are off the streets once and for all. After setting up some Korean gangsters by allowing them to steal a car with a tracker in it, Ludlow not only goes to their house and blows them all away in a frenzied gun fight, but also rescues two teenage girls who have been kidnapped for unspeakable ends. But while this all is extremely dubious from a legal standpoint, Tom is repeatedly protected not only by his unit, but his ladder-climbing Captain Jack Wander, who is very adept at warping the story to make it seem like his boys are heroes.
However, while Tom is content downing booze, dropping scumbags and bitterly brooding over his dead wife at the drop of a hat, it seems that there are some figures in the LAPD that want his questionable winning streak to come crashing down.
One is Captain James Briggs of Internal Affairs, who starts circling Ludlow with hunger in his eyes, and rumour has it, he’s only locked onto Tom because his former partner, Terrence Washington, has dropped his name after a colossal falling out. However, as muddled and messy as Ludlow’s life is, things get even more frenzied when, after following Terrence into a liquor store to have things out with him, Tom gets into the middle of a hit when two, masked gangbangers enter the store and fill Terry with so many holes, you could use him to strain carrots. But when Wander tries to cover this up too, Tom’s long dormant, booze-suppressed conscience starts to think that something far more illeagal is afoot and aims to unravel the tangles surrounding his former partner’s murder.
If there’s a glaring issue concerning Street Kings, it’s that both Ayers and Ellroy’s outlooks are so famously bleak, that it’s actually fairly easy to guess virtually every twist and shock simply because all the characters are plainly awful people. Quite why the pair seem to think that a film filled to the brim with corrupt cops will surprise us by suddenly revealing that – guess what – they’re even more corrupt that we originally thought, would bamboozle anyone I don’t know, but the second those gangbangers walk into the liquor store and obliterate a beardless Terry Crews with bullets (Terry hates small arms fire), I knew exactly who really was hiding behind the shades and bandanas masking their faces. As a result, the rest of the plot, that sees a vengeful Ludlow hunt down who he thinks is responsible, feels a bit superfluous once you’ve figured out what parts of the plot is actually a red herring. However, saving the day is some juicy casting and a slick look that gives this ludicrously gritty thriller the edge over its more predictable elements.
The major draw here is watching Keanu Reeves perform the relative rarity of playing the role of an utter bastard. While he’s gone dark before in the likes of The Gift (witnessing Ted “Theodore” Logan sucker punch Cate Blanchett in the gut was legitimately ghastly), watching him spit racist jibes and blow away unarmed perps in-between knocking back endless bottles of airplane bottles of Tequila proves to be quite an arresting sight. While Reeves needs to be cast in the correct role to get the full potential of the man, he actually does pretty well inhabiting the shoes of an amoral scumbag who is convinced he’s actually an avenging angel. He’s surrounded by a rather starry cast too, with the likes of an overacting Forest Whitaker, a fresh-faced Chris Evans, Hugh Laurie getting to keep his House accent and smaller roles for Common, Naomie Harris, Jay Mohr and Cedric The Entertainer, it’s something of lush affair and Ayer ensures that they’re all supported by his typically hellish vision of L.A. gang culture, that looks as sweltering as the surface of the sun and where random gunfire can rip you five new navels at any given moment.
However, it’s a shame that two such titans of abject, criminal misery couldn’t have managed to whip up something a little more original, unpredictable, or even memorable; because despite being a more-than-capable time waster, it sure as hell isn’t L.A. Confidential. Still, the performances are strong, even if the actors have to chew their way through dialogue tougher than two-dollar steak (“Do the department a favor and wash your mouth out with buckshot.” is one such hyper-macho witticism), and the frequent gunfights are vicious and bloody and allows Reeves to engage in some gunplay far scrappier and dirtier than anything that eventually came his way in John Wick.
While disappointingly throwaway, Street Kings still manages to be a diverting little potboiler, especially if you respond well to the the aggressively downbeat worlds and antagonist characters that David Ayer seems to propergate within his work. Yes, at times the fact that almost every character seems to either be a morals-free cop, a deranged gangbanger, or frequently both, tends to feel a little adolescent in its thinking – think an emo Serpico – but it’s exaggerations are admittedly fun. Who else would think to include a side character who pours beer on his serial instead of milk, or have Reeves out maneuver an assailant in a gunfight by using a fridge. Maybe a rewrite by Equilibrium’s Kurt Wimmer may explain why the film frequently teeters on exaggerated action tropes despite featuring one of America’s most celebrated authors in the writing credits.
A perfectly acceptable tale about crooked cops, Street Kings gets a blast of the type of hyperbolic, macho, urban grit that David Ayer seems constantly obsessed with. While frequently preposterous, a solid cast – led by Keanu visibly relishing playing a dickhead – manages to offset its more predictable aspects. It ain’t exactly the king, but it ain’t a joker either…
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