 |
| |
 |
Street Kings
Starring: Keanu Reeves, Forest
Whitaker, Hugh Laurie, Chris Evans, Jay Mohr
Directed by: David Ayer
Produced
by:
Alexandra Milchan, Lucas Foster, Erwin Stoff
Written
by: James Ellroy (screenplay & story), Kurt Wimmer & Jamie Moss
(screenplay)
Distributor: 20th Century Fox, Fox Searchlight Pictures |
|
| |
 |
 |
As often as life in the American ghetto is irrationally
glamorized by contemporary filmmakers, there remains a rugged,
bleak form of visual poetry to be found in the setting.
Filmmaker David Ayer depicted this with stunning authenticity in
his script for the 2001 cop-drama, Training Day, and has
since returned for second-helpings with Street Kings,
this time in the director’s chair. Unfortunately, he sacrifices
all of the drama, fear, corruptness, and community found in his
South Central L.A.-backdrop during this outing in order to mold
it into a routine cop-drama. Street Kings may contain
many of the same locales as Training Day, but you
wouldn’t know it based on the generic manner in which they are
depicted. Ayer’s screenplay could’ve been slapped into any
location—even the rich, near-crime-free zone of Los Angeles’
Beverly Hills—and retained the same daytime-television-level of
tension that it boasts now. Yes, there are some interesting
twists and turns made by the plot of Ayer’s tale of L.A.P.D.
corruption, but there’s not much of a reason for the viewer to
care about these when they belong to a soulless, underdeveloped
whole. Perhaps the greatest sin committed by Street Kings
is that it wastes the talents of its all-star cast—headlined by
Keanu Reeves, Forest Whitaker, Hugh Laurie, Chris Evans, and
Cedric the Entertainer—on such a manufactured story and
one-dimensional set of characters. Skip it.
-Danny Baldwin,
Bucket Reviews
Review Published
on: 4.14.2007
Screened on:
4.12.2007 at the Edwards San Marcos
18 in San Marcos, CA.
Street Kings is rated R and runs 108
minutes.
Back to Home |
|
 |
|
|
|
