Street Kings [2008]

See Larger Image	List Price: £19.99 Our Price: £6.98 Availability: Usually dispatched within 2 to 3 weeks Manufacturer: 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment Starring: Keanu Reeves, Forest Whitaker, Hugh Laurie, John Corbett, Terry Crews Directed By: David Ayer Average Customer Rating:


Audience Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over Binding: DVD EAN: 5039036038409 Format: PAL Label: 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment Manufacturer: 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment Number Of Items: 1 Publisher: 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment Region Code: 2 Release Date: 2008-09-15 Running Time: 105 Studio: 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment Theatrical Release Date: 2008
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Editorial Reviews: Street Kings is a pungent bouquet of corruption, violence, multi-ethnic mayhem, macho glee laced with macho angst, and fluorescently obscene dialogue from the mind of James Ellroy. Its hero, though he'd scarcely consent to be called one, is L.A. police detective Tom Ludlow (Keanu Reeves), for whom life is a wound that won't heal and dealing out retribution to scumbags is the ongoing treatment. Ludlow's the star player--"the tip of the [expletive] spear"--on a team of detectives headed by Capt. Jack Wander (Forest Whitaker). Coach Wander relies on his boys to keep breaking lurid cases, usually through deeply darkside underground work, and raising his profile with the media and the department. In pursuit of these goals, nothing is forbidden except failure, and the truth is what you make it look like. This is familiar Ellroy territory, most effectively translated to the screen in L.A. Confidential (which should have won the 1997 Oscar, and would have if Titanic hadn't launched that year). If you know Ellroy's ground game, you can pretty much guess where Street Kings is going, and where it's been. Still, the twists and torques of its urban road-rage course maintain the centrifugal force needed to hold us in our seats (a tactical highlight: refrigerator adapted as rolling barricade), and the movie keeps bopping us with oddball casting coups: comic Jay Mohr and Northern Exposure/Sex and the City veteran John Corbett as two members of Coach Warden's gonzo detective squad; Cedric the Entertainer doing a nicely nuanced turn as a street creature; Hugh Laurie doing a less-hyper version of House, if House worked Internal Affairs. The problem is that director David Ayer keeps everything intense. Dialogues are shot too close-up, line readings are too strident, the action is too nonstop slam. Recall Curtis Hanson's L.A. Confidential and the mind's eye summons up a whole spectrum of existence, mood, place, historical period, emotional investment; there's an amplitude to the picture and the sensibility bringing it to us, something besides the whodunit and the endless rap sheet of nasty what-they-done. Everything in Street Kings is one-note, and with Keanu Reeves playing it implosive and Forest Whitaker locked in crazier-than-an-outhouse-rat mode, that's no way to stay the course. --Richard T. Jameson
Spotlight customer reviews: Customer Rating: Summary: this roadside romeo hits harsh times with real nuts Comment: david ayers in some ways has completed a trilogy of sorts,set in the purgatory of downtomn LA , with training day ,HARSH TIMES and now this rather provocative ,confrontational piece, where the characters all are driven by the lust for power ,right or wrong is only trivial-what prevails is whether you can survive and get away ,that is precisely why whitakers character is both powerful yet flawed as he cannot commit to his ideology and beliefs , tom -keanu reeves-defines a raw brutality which is born out of corrupt injustice and effete judiciary. as for keanu he is absolutely superb as the loner ,bitter widower and in some ways desperately tender white man ,who is not afraid to be labelled as WHITE ,In the current world that tenacity to being a racial prototype can be a strength of character , he defines a whimsical disturbed ,methodical man who wakes to an alarm clock and goes directly for his handgun and then for a swig of vodka,his mid-day alcoholic binges is casual but so are the racial taunts he and his handyman endure as white boys , the gratuitious violence is staged well, as in HARSH TIMES ,the sex slave trade in los angeles is sensitively targeted and filty dirty cops rule the roost . keanu-ayers make this a palpably fearsome frolic with dead corpses litterring the streets ,toilets and the hills, the california sun drenches it all in a bloody haze with the downtown ghettos and the chase on foot through domestic latino quarter is brilliant . the 2 wommen ,one a widow and the other toms lover are rudimentary but good ,this is a bad world and as tom says bad only breeds bad in reality .while harsh time was about damaged and lost american youth secondary to the immoral iraqi intervention .this is about home ground and the fact that to eliminate evil ,you have to employ risque tactics bordering onto mendacious immorality-true but who is to decide who is evil and what defines good ,ayers debates this with kanu himself on the borderline as he looks sceptical throughout and disappointed by a sysyem ,which has failed both the public and his individual life ,but tom is a tenacious character and he survives -keanu has matured and grown in the years since the bullock romcom and here he looks delivers ,whitaker has PTOSIS IN HIS LEFT EYE and it distracts , and his pleadings with tom are rather infantile . the manhunt is very interesting and also quite harrowing with automatic weapon grillings turning victims into turkey shoot ,but it is violence with a purpose and mr ayers has delivered again , this is not in the league with l.a confidential or HARSH TIMES ,BUT IT DOES HAVE AN ENERGY ,it is rather perfunctory ,primitive and inconclusive and leaves a lot of questions unanswered but it is thought-provoking and ayers is one of the better directors who can deliver in the context of socio-political thriller dramas , yes it is flawed but less so then DEPARTED .there is an almost perverse but humourous episode about racial complaints as tom is assigned to internal affairs -is it surprising it evokes mention of rodney king and almost all complainants are black . a rather disturbing look at the melting pot that is america today ,struggling with its own demons in the backdrop of a lost war with looming economic disaster . this is a consummate caper with political overtones but ayers has delivered stylishly with a very convincing keanu reeves . Customer Rating: Summary: Ellroy Rules Comment: Torn from the fervid imagination of James Ellroy (who wrote the original story and co-writes the screenplay) this is easily one of the films of the year. Dark, crazed and relentless, it even features a good performance from Keanu Reeves(backed up by raft of A-list character actors), and more than lives up to the peerless 'LA Confidential'. A must for all crime fans and all the twisted Ellroy afficianados out there. Customer Rating: Summary: Two and a half stars Comment: This plays like a third of the plot of L.A. Confidential - not surprising when you realise that it's co-written by James Ellroy. Tough, but tender, dumb cop is manipulated by senior officers in the LAPD for their own ends. Everyone is cynical, everyone is corrupt, everyone is violent, to the point where you begin to wonder how the LAPD can even function anymore.And yet this modern look at crime and punishment is so old fashioned. We've seen it all before in films like The French Connection only more interestingly done. At the end I half expected someone to tell Keanu Reeves "It's Chinatown, Jake.". Violent, action-packed, reasonably acted, competently directed and strangely boring. Reeves compares badly to Denzil Washington's similar turn in the superior Training Day.Watching it,I found myself thinking about how much cop drama has moved on. I'd rather watch a couple of episodes of The Closer or Life than movies like this. Someone needs to tell everyone involved that the bar has been raised and stuff like this doesn't really cut it anymore. Customer Rating: Summary: Run of the mill 'gritty cop drama that plays out like a mediocre, forgettable episode of a TV cop show Comment: The main star Reeves is pretty wooden, definately lacking in any emotional conviction in his acting - how can I care about a character that has probably only three facial expressions? He's got a blank look in his eyes most of the time. Whittaker is good but not his usual best. Chris Evans was the best for me, who seemed alot more natural than the other actors playing cops. The rappers (The Game and Common) in this are surprisingly good too, but it's a shame the main actor isn't Laurie is good too, if underused. It's a quite alright running time and doesn't go on for too long but the story doesn't live up to expectations. On and the twist? I didn't buy that and there's better twists in TV cop dramas to be honest. The story is mildly interesting but not as action packed as you might think, or at least not in an original or amazing way. Alot of oranges and blacks so it's pretty standard. The action parts, in particular during a foot chase scene lacks the energy and real heart-pumping, edge-of-the-seat feeling to it that I've enjoyed in other thrillers. The score isn't memorable and the hip hops songs heard alot desperately try to add street 'atmosphere'. It all gives an air that it's trying to be tough and gritty but just isn't cause it's rying too hard and isn't inventive. Overall: The script doesn't have anything new to say about crime in L.A., the dialogue is mostly contrived (witness the scene near the beginning with Reeves and the Korean men) and seems to use alot of f-words for the sake of it. The twist was badly execited and predictable, the acting from the lead was flat and unconvincing and just doesn't have enough grit or moving scenes ro truly show the extent of how dangerous life on the 'mean' streets probably is. Quite forgettable really and there's no flair or spark that sets it apart from what I've seen hundreds of times before. No extras as well! Am I glad that I only rented this. Customer Rating: Summary: Keanu battles his way through a web of police corruption in this enjoyable cop thriller Comment: This is very much the sort of film where you have to make sure you keep up as if you lose your concentration for a minute then you'll end up losing the plot of the film, as there's so many twists and turns to it. Keanu Reeves is as wooden as ever but he always brings a kind of charisma to the roles he plays and despite some deadpan acting he actually plays the lead role well. His character, an alcoholic cop who's very much on the edge, is a departure from Reeves's normal roles. His character is far from whiter than white, he serves a corrupt Captain, and his methods are often indistinguishable from the crooks he's trying to bring to justice. But when the corrupt circles Reeves's character mixes in results in the murder of his ex-partner, he decides enough is enough. This is where the twists and turns start as the web of corruption is so well organised it's difficult to tell who can be trusted and who cannot. The film has its brutal moments as Reeves's character single handily takes on the organised corruption that he used to be a part of. The film powerfully portrays how corruption brings out the worst in people, turning good cops into bad cops, and shows how turning a blind eye to such corruption is almost as bad as being a part of it. This a very enjoyable thriller with some good performances all round, definitely worth checking out. More Reviews