The Phoenix Network:
 
 
About  |  Advertise
 
Features  |  Reviews
Best2012Vote-1000x50

Street Kings

A copycat cop movie
By PETER KEOUGH  |  April 9, 2008
2.0 2.0 Stars
Street-Kings2_inside
STREET KINGS: This James Ellroy script has been done before — and better.

A film based on a James Ellroy story should evoke its brutal LA demi-monde setting, not the clichés of other films from the same genre. Films like Training Day, which David Ayer wrote before making his directorial debut with this Ellroy vehicle by way of a committee of other writers. Tom Ludlow (a numb Keanu Reeves) wakes up hungover in his squalid apartment. He slips a clip into his 9mm, buys some vodka nips, and ends his day gunning down some Koreans selling underage girls to pedophiles. Bending the rules a bit, but evil has been vanquished, and Captain Wander (a wacky Forest Whitaker) is delighted. Soon he’ll be Chief! But Ludlow’s angry ex-partner is not so impressed. Is it because Ludlow is a racist? (That’s an issue the film never confronts.) Because he and Wander are dirty? As the body count rises, the question of good and evil becomes just another device in a plot that is convoluted and tedious and has been done many times before — and much better. 107 minutes | Boston Common + Fenway + Fresh Pond + Chestnut Hill + suburbs
Related: New to DVD: December, 20 2006, Body dabble, Half Nelson, More more >
  Topics: Reviews , Celebrity News, Entertainment, Movies,  More more >
| More

 Friends' Activity   Popular   Most Viewed 
[ 02/17 ]   "Guys, Gals, and Glitter"  @ Club Café
ARTICLES BY PETER KEOUGH
Share this entry with Delicious
  •   REVIEW: CORIOLANUS  |  February 16, 2012
    In a line of fascist-style stagings of the Bard from Orson Welles's 1937 black-shirted Julius Caesar to Richard Loncraine's brown-shirted Richard III (1998), Ralph Fiennes sets his lean and hungry take on Shakespeare's tragedy in a mo dern-day war zone, paring the play to a brisk two hours.
  •   REVIEW: SAFE HOUSE  |  February 15, 2012
    Daniel Espinosa's over-edited but engaging spy thriller delves into edgy territory untouched by any of the numerous movies it imitates: it has Brendan Gleeson do an American accent.
  •   REVIEW: THE SECRET WORLD OF ARRIETTY  |  February 15, 2012
    The most touching love story and best children's movie in a long time, Hiromasa Yonebayashi's adaptation of Mary Norton's book The Borrowers employs old-fashioned animation techniques to create a world that is familiar, uncanny, and luminous.
  •   REVIEW: RAMPART  |  February 15, 2012
    The rotten cop flick has become a mini-genre of sorts, a subset of noir, going back at least to Orson Welles's Touch of Evil .
  •   REVIEW: THE OSCAR NOMINATED SHORT FILMS 2012: DOCUMENTARY  |  February 10, 2012
    The films in this program contain some of the most powerful images to be seen on the screen this year.

 See all articles by: PETER KEOUGH

MOST POPULAR
RSS Feed of for the most popular articles
 Most Viewed   Most Emailed