By Armond White

Street Kings
Directed by David Ayers


This is the fifth anniversary since Charlize Theron’s masquerade in Monster inaugurated the stunt performance as film culture’s “corn of the realm.” Since then, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Cate Blanchett, Marion Cotillard and Daniel Day-Lewis have all profited from the hoax. Now, Keanu Reeves joins that circus in Street Kings. Reeves plays Tom Ludlow, an L.A. police detective battling precinct corruption and an untrustworthy Internal Affairs investigation. But Reeves doesn’t do the obvious: urban-ethnic street slang or boho swagger. Instead, he essays the clichéd role with something like Daniel Day-Lewis’ audacity. Reeves plays the morally conflicted Ludlow as an uncanny impersonation of Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry. And Reeves’ seeming relaxation—by now the foundation of his onscreen confidence—is much easier to take than Day-Lewis’ angsty fireworks.

If only Street Kings’ director, David Ayers, and screenwriter, James Ellroy, had the wit to complement Keanu’s ingenuity; instead, Street Kings unintentionally provokes laughter. From the moment Forest Whitaker lumbers on screen as Ludlow’s captain, Jack Wander (Whitaker does his own Bill Duke impersonation), we immediately know who the bad guy is. Hugh Laurie may play an I.A. captain named Biggs, but he’s just moonlighting from TV. Overprotective, morally shifty Wander has to be the guy yanking L.A.P.D.’s strings.

Reeves’ decision to portray Ludlow’s sincerity in the style of Eastwood’s mythic urban-savior cleverly counteracts Ayers and Ellroy’s claptrap quotient. They write and direct as if none of this has been seen before, but Reeves invokes pop memory (of Eastwood’s crazy cool) which is funnier than Day-Lewis’ impersonation of John Huston. Ludlow is poker-faced but sincere. Assigned to a desk job placating citizens’ complaints, he’s taciturn, tough, yet gentle.

Too bad Street Kings doesn’t build on Reeves’ personality. Ayers wrote the script for Training Day and Ellroy’s stock-in-trade is L.A. sleaze (the clinical ugliness that impressed people in L.A. Confidential but didn’t help Black Dahlia). “Evil” is pretentiously discussed several times in the space of five minutes. Reeves himself can’t redeem this, but his understatement is the only distraction we get. It prevents him from disgracing himself like Common, The Game and Cedric the Entertainer, who contribute more bozo stereotypes to Ayers-Ellroy’s urban police follies. At least Keanu never wears out his welcome like Theron, Hoffman, etc. If only he’d choose better company.