Street Kings (2008, USA)

David Ayer’s Street Kings plays like a really bad episode of The Shield. Whereas The Shield tackles corruption and the inner demons that haunt cops on the wrong side of the fence with a keen eye for shades of grey, Street Kings is nothing if not pure black-and-white. Keanu Reeves plays a dirty cop who’s forced to reconsider the error of his ways following the murder of his former partner. The cast has some real ringers – Forrest Whitaker as an obvious baddie, Hugh Laurie doing his best not to merely play House in absence of an actual character, and Chris Evans sputtering through a rookie cop bit – but no meat at all. It’s obvious, needlessly violent, and frankly dull. Ayer’s now made this film three times, each worse than the last – while Harsh Times was generally weak, at least it had some originality, and though most people generally agree that Training Day was highly overrated, Denzel Washington’s performance still rings true, and the plot had some smarts about it. Perhaps Street Kings’ status as a box office bomb will shake Ayers out of his niche and push him in a new direction.