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Street Kings
EMAILPRINTFox Searchlight Pictures
Mixed or average reviews
Based on 28 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 50 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Crime | Drama | Suspense/Thriller
Written by:
James Ellroy
David Ayer
Directed by: David Ayer
Release Date:
Theatrical: April 11, 2008
DVD: August 19, 2008
Running Time: 109 minutes, Color
Origin: USA
Summary
RATING: R for strong violence and pervasive language
Starring Keanu Reeves, Forest Whitaker, Hugh Laurie, Terry Crews, Chris Evans, Cedric the Entertainer, Common, and The Game
In Street Kings, a police thriller directed by David Ayer, Keanu Reeves plays Tom Ludlow, a veteran LAPD Vice detective. Ludlow sets out on a quest to discover the killers of his former partner, Detective Terrance Washington. Academy Award winner Forest Whitaker plays Captain Wander, Ludlow's supervisor, whose duties include keeping him within the confines of the law and out of the clutches of Internal Affairs Captain Biggs (Hugh Laurie). Ludlow teams up with a young Robbery-Homicide detective (Chris Evans) to track Washington's killers through the diverse communities of Los Angeles. Their determination pays off when the two detectives track down Washington's murderers and confront them in an attempt to bring them to justice. (Fox Searchlight)
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt
"Kings" covers familiar territory but does so with ruthless efficiency, intense performances and a densely packed plot designed to highlight the moral issues that most concern Ayer and Ellroy.
Read Full Review >Variety Peter Debruge
A brutal look at police corruption that allows director David Ayer and "L.A. Confidential" author James Ellroy to pool their deeply cynical insights.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Joe Neumaier
After its clichéd first scene - a solo LAPD officer battling a well-armed gang of thugs - Street Kings becomes an enjoyably tough, blood-splattered action drama that revolves around the one good cop at its center.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
There's a lot to appreciate in Street Kings, a tight, propulsive action thriller, but there's one thing to marvel at, and that's James Ellroy's command of story.
Read Full Review >Time Richard Corliss
Armed or not, Reeves is the weapon that can go off at any time. That's why Street Kings, though it isn't a great movie, is a pretty damn cool Keanu Reeves movie, one that on the Reevesian action scale measures somewhere between "Whoa" and "Wow."
Read Full Review >The New York Times Manohla Dargis
It’s easy to laugh at Street Kings for its bigger than big emotions, its preposterously kinky narrative turns and overwrought jawing and yowling, but there’s no doubt that it also keeps you watching, really watching, all the way to the end.
Read Full Review >Premiere Jenni Miller
If you’re looking for some big, stupid fun, you could do worse than Street Kings.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Wesley Morris
Street Kings is nonsense, and yet the crooked, racialized world underneath the soulless mayhem is pretty fascinating.
Read Full Review >Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez
The picture may feel more than a little familiar, but Ayer knows how to cook up intense setpieces, and Reeves keeps getting better at the weary hero role he continually gravitates toward.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
Despite the predictability of the overall story arc, there's suspense and tension to be found between the credit sequences, but the movie is saddled with an ending that is both improbable and borderline insulting.
Read Full Review >New York Post Kyle Smith
A wet, red chunk of pulp that knows what it is and doesn't care.
Read Full Review >Empire Ian Nathan
Another mean, violent and decently acted slab of Ellroy-flavoured criminality, with an impressively battered Keanu Reeves, but Ayers is no Curtis Hanson.
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy
For what's essentially a bad movie, Street Kings is fairly tight and energetic.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
Every so often, Keanu Reeves' robo-voiced blankness serves him well, but when he has to play a pulpy, tormented demon-saint, scraping up insults and spitting them out like bullets, he's like the host of an infomercial doing an impersonation of a badass.
Read Full Review >Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow
See it with people who take it for the trash it is, and you can cheer the baroque killings and laugh fondly with Forest Whitaker as he tries too hard to create a domestic sociopath to match his role as "Idi Amin."
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias
After all the actorly fireworks, Street Kings concludes that the LAPD is an institution where even the well-intentioned can't work clean. Okay. What else?
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold
It's hard to recall another time when the cross-purposes of two collaborating filmmakers of a major film has been quite so evident, or when the theme of the movie itself has been so totally schizophrenic -- half populist outrage, half Nazi.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader J.R. Jones
It preserves the peculiar machismo of Ayer's earlier projects: the alpha male dominates not only because he's the most powerful, but because he's the most jaded.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips
I enjoyed parts of Street Kings but I didn’t believe one thing about it, and I couldn’t get past Reeves’ unsuitability to his role. He may someday play a cop on the edge convincingly, but the edge needs to be sharper than this.
Read Full Review >Slate Dana Stevens
There's something cynical about Ayer's attempt to preserve Ludlow as a hero after scene upon scene meant to show, with heavy irony, how lawlessly he enforced the law. You can't lionize your "Dirty Harry" vigilante and expose his hypocrisy, too.
Read Full Review >Village Voice Tim Grierson
Ayer's grim police thriller mostly plays as one long dick-measuring competition. You sense that an infinitely more complex drama exists within the film's grasp, but no one bothered to stop guzzling the testosterone long enough to find it.
Read Full Review >Rolling Stone Peter Travers
The acting? Common and the Game score as baddies, but Hugh Laurie as an acid-tongued internal-affairs cop is disappointingly just House without the limp.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Maitland McDonagh
There are two kinds of police officers in David Ayers and James Ellroy's convoluted, ultraviolent tale of corruption within the LAPD: dirty cops and dirtier ones.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Desson Thomson
All the movie's treacheries, deceptions and story twists are marred by our lack of innocence. We see the big picture way before the characters do, and that pushes us right out of the movie and back into our seats -- the last place we want to be.
Read Full Review >USA Today Claudia Puig
Wastes a moderately intriguing premise by filling it with laughably clichéd dialogue, one-dimensional characters and implausible turns of events.
Read Full Review >Film Threat Pete Vonder Haar
Two things come to mind as you watch the first act of Street Kings, the first is how fresh and exciting the movie would’ve been if it was released in 1984, the second is the question, “James Ellroy wrote that?”
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 7.5 (out of 10) based on 50 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
jorge gave it a6:
This movie is okay not the best action movie, but still has some awesome scenes,and it keep's you wondering what will happen next.Acting was okay and the plot was okay it's not worth to go see it in the theater maybe just rent it for $2.
Robert gave it a9:
I don't think the critics are right on this one. I thought it was a verry good movie and a damn good Keanu Reeves movie.
Jack B gave it an8:
Easily the best cop movie out in the last few years, gritty yet slick and stylish. Keanu Reeves suits the role well and is the best thing I've seen him in in ages. Could have done with being another 10-15 minutes longer but overall very enjoyable.
Mark K. gave it an8:
Since James Ellroy takes the screenwriting duties it's to no surprise that the script's structure takes a similar setup to L.A Confindental, which means that Street Kings is a very authentic triller with plenty of plot twists to keep you watching throughout putting a satisfied smile on your face at the end. The performances are mostly excellent with sharp dialogue that makes you feel the heat radiating from the conversations and fights. The only problem is Reeves, who brings in the same monotonous voice that we've heard before and thus seems to generate a lot of contrast with the other actors. He also looks as tough as a cardboard box. Still, this film is well worth watching.
George M gave it an8:
It's a decent cop drama with enough twists to keep it interesting. The movie has a cold brutality to it, watching Tom Ludlow (Reeves) being used as a instrument of death for the sake of corruption is interesting to watch.....especially as he slowly finds out the truth. Acting is decent all around and despite some cheesey dialogue here and there everything works out well. The shoot-outs are particular brutal and have a gritty realistic vibe to them, making it all the more intense. This film is definately worth a look.....one of the better " cop / crime dramas" to come around in a while.
Josh B. gave it an8:
Saw this at the cinema. Very good. Better then I expected especially from Keanu. He was very good!
Jay H. gave it a6:
Well made but not very convincing. The film's style is very routine and the movie didn't really have anything new to offer. The acting is good, as well as the editing.
