The first fifteen or so minutes of Street Kings is absolutely tops. It’s high octane, twisty like a giant pretzel, and (probably most importantly) Keanu Reeves doesn’t speak much and gets shot a few times. It’s when this roller coaster opening ends that things start to go sour, and (probably not coincidentally) that Keanu begins to open his mouth a lot more.

 

This second feature from David Ayer is silly, simplistic, and feels like it was written by a room of 15 year olds gathered around some sort of smoking device emitting illegal drugsmoke. It’s no coincidence that Ayer wrote 2001’s Training Day, and much of Street Kings feels like it wants to be that (superior) movie. And though Ayer might have an idea of how to write a decent corrupt cop flick, he shows here that he doesn’t know where to start with directing one.

 

Briefly, the plot centres around whatever-it-takes-to-get-the-bad-dudes detective Tom Ludlow (Reeves), who ends up mired in police corruption, conspiracy, and about three thousand litres of blood. With the odds well and truly out of his favour, he has to fight to clear his name, his reputation, and – ultimately – save his life. So, sorta the script to Training Day. Unfortunately, this script (which wasn't written by Ayer) has none of the subtlety of Antoine Fuqua’s flick. Watch the scene where Reeves confronts the coroner who worked on his dead wife’s autopsy. It's a stab a exposition to reveal a glimpse of the conflicted Luclow's past - but the bluntness of the writing is actually embarrassing to watch, and seems to have been constructed exclusively for the gormless few whose perennial cinema catchphrase is “…wait, what just happened?”

 

Forest Whitaker is absolutely wasted as the police Captain, whose script notes I imagine would have read something like: ‘play it like Denzel in Training Day, only crazier’. Hugh ‘House M.D.’ Laurie plays the one clean cop on the force who is trying to sort out the corruption through probably the most convoluted plan of action I’ve seen this side of Lost, and Cedric the Entertainer kicks in a cameo as a lowdown drug dealer.

 

The script’s a mess and the direction is sub-par, but the whole clunky mess might hold together if someone other than Reeves was in the lead. There’s one scene where he can’t even take a nip of vodka convincingly. Honestly.