Peter Bradshaw 

Street Kings

Peter Bradshaw: Sweaty and cynical Los Angeles thriller, co-written by LA Confidential's James Ellroy and starring Keanu Reeves
  
  

Street Kings
Plenty of empty bravura... Street Kings Photograph: PR

David Ayer's sweaty and cynical Los Angeles thriller, co-written by LA Confidential's James Ellroy, is pretty similar to Harsh Times, a film Ayer directed, and to Training Day, a film he wrote and produced. Unlike those films, sadly, this doesn't have a star with the charisma of Denzel Washington or Christian Bale. We are back in the sulphurous world of deep-cover cops: Keanu Reeves plays Capt Jack Wander, a tough LAPD officer who prioritises shooting and asking questions in the traditional manner; Forest Whitaker is his fiercely loyal, and similarly tribalist chief. But Wander finds himself under scrutiny from an Internal Affairs cop, played by a scene-stealing Hugh Laurie. (Mischievously, Ayer shows us Laurie first in a hospital ward; for a second we think he's reprising his House schtick.) There's plenty of empty bravura, and Reeves is fundamentally blank and uninteresting.

 

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