This review was originally published April 12th, 2008.

“It could have been great.”

A more haunting Hollywood phrase for directors and writers and studio executives (and sometimes fans) you may not be able to find. Given its pedigree (writer James Ellroy from who’s work L.A. Confidential was drawn, and director David Ayer, who scripted the compelling, if flawed, Training Day), Street Kings should have been, in the eternal words of Marlon Brando, ‘a contender.’ Instead, it is a mildly distracting entertainment, a choice to make if nothing else looks good at the multiplex, and worst of all, forgettable. Light a candle for missed opportunities; this film has them in spades.

Ayer certainly has a type. The writer of Dark Blue and Training Day and the writer/director of Harsh Times, he has beat the horse of corrupt L.A. cops to a bloody pulp. That horse was still wheezing a little, so he decided to finish the job with Street Kings, which is, shocker of all shockers, a story about corrupt cops in the City of Angels. I’m only being partly sarcastic here; the formula of corrupt men in uniform who develop a conscience is not a bad one and can produce some real gold if mined properly. The themes that Ayer is going for – moral ambiguity, truth at the expense of great sacrifice, the corrupting nature of power – are subjects worthy of examination. The problem then is who he has asked to shoulder the weight of these thematic subjects, leading to missed opportunity exhibit #1.

Keanu Reeves.

Reeves plays Tom Ludlow, a veteran of the Vice Special unit captained by Jack Wander (Forest Whitaker), who has spent his law enforcement career engaging in less than law-abiding activity. The film kicks off with one of these under-the-table ‘missions’ (as Captain Wander likes to call them), but once the cartridges have been expelled and the blood is running across the floor, Ludlow isn’t so sure he’s down with the SOP (even if he does save two little girls in the process). As Wander points out, though, Tom is the “tip of the spear,” the baddest of the bad, Mr. Extreme Prejudice himself, and he doesn’t have the luxury of a conscience. And therein lies the problem. People keep telling us Tom is a nightmare on legs, and the script keeps indicating that he’s developing a moral compass, but the actor in question is Keanu Reeves.

Whoa, dude!....I have, like, a real gun that shoots stuff!

I have a theory that as long as Reeves is only required to act bewildered, he performs quite well. Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, Speed, A Scanner Darkly, and The Matrix trilogy are all examples where Reeves is an asset rather than a liability, but in each of those instances his characters are in a perpetual state of confusion about the events surrounding them. Now take a gander at Johnny Mnemonic, The Replacements, or Constantine, where Reeves is required to pretend like he knows what’s going on, and you begin to see the problem. The Street Kings formula works when you have actors like Kurt Russell, Denzel Washington, and Christian Bale inhabiting the emotional complexities of their characters (whom were all employed in Ayer’s previous films), but Reeves isn’t convincing in the slightest. He’s not necessarily a bad actor, but he’s bad here. Even more stupefying (yes, it gets worse) is the dialog that Reeves is forced recite with conviction: “We were black and white and black and white when we thought that meant something.” You don’t say? Thus we come to exhibit #2.

James Ellroy.

Ellroy, that purveyor of modern crime pulp (who’s L.A. Confidential was adapted into one of the best films of the nineties and easily the greatest example of modern noir) obviously has a treasure trove of crime prose to pull from. In competent hands (Curtis Hanson) you find a masterpiece; in middling ones you find camp, which is what Street Kings often descends to. Joe Carnahan (who’s similarly themed Narc is a much better entry in the bad-cop-goes-gold genre) put it thusly: “James loves that snap, the pop of [the dialog.] That’s the danger of Ellroy: In the wrong hands it slides into camp, because it’s so wonderfully overwrought.” The actors chew on their lines like a stale piece of beef jerky; everything sounds wrong and sticks in the ear like chewing gum: “He bleeds blue!”, “Give me your burner!”, and “We’re the police. We can do whatever the hell we want!” sound like so many rocks rattling around in a tin can.

Common acts against racial sterotypes. Or not.

To be fair, on a strictly guilty-pleasure genre-junkie level the film functions somewhat effectively. While Street Kings‘ central mystery (who gunned down Tom’s ex-partner?) is as predictable as a soap opera, there are some satisfying action set pieces. Sometimes you just get that blood ‘n bullets itch, and while this isn’t the golden back scratcher of genre fixes, it does pick at it like a ragged fingernail. And, in the words of my colleague, it wins the “Weekly Award for Movie with the Largest Number of Actors that Don’t Have Real Names (Common, The Game, and Cedric the Entertainer all make appearances),” so there is that. Oh well. It could have been great.