Reeves got in on that wave, too, with Point Break and Speed, dodging bullets and breaking regulations in the name of the law. Those were the days when overkill was never enough, and Street Kings at least gets that part right. The crooked cops are not only crooked, they’re also murderers willing to drop everything to rape their victims’ widows and girlfriends just for fun. They are bad, bad, bad.
So is the screenplay, which reads like a Bartlett’s of general-purpose action-movie lines:
“You were toe-to-toe with evil and you won.”
“Why can’t you have a normal life like everybody else?”
“Everything I touch dies.”
“Who are you to judge me?”
That doesn’t even scratch the surface of the movie’s banality, but every once in a while there’s a real doozy like: “He’s got a PhD in catching cops slipping up!” Or a text message from one crooked cop to another: “He’s here. Kill him.” And then the dude signs his nickname.
But come on, don’t give Keanu Reeves — or anybody, for that matter — a line like this, about Tom’s ex-partner: “We were black and white in black and white, back when it meant something.” Are these people trying to make the Showgirls of retro-1990s cop movies?
Sophomore director Ayer (Harsh Times) is maybe not so sure. He seems invested in the chases and shoot-outs, but sometimes his spatial relationships break down, and you can’t tell who is where. In one gunfight an entire Harvest Gold-colored refrigerator materializes out of nowhere. Meanwhile, Academy-Award winner Forest Whitaker doesn’t seem to know what movie this should be, while House star Hugh Laurie — giving exactly the same performance he does on TV — may be in on the joke, even if nobody else is.
RSS