World Famous Comics: Street Kings (+ Digital Copy) [Blu-ray]
Street Kings (+ Digital Copy) [Blu-ray]
Starring: Keanu Reeves, Forest Whitaker, Hugh Laurie, Chris Evans, Cedric the Entertainer Directed By: David Ayer Average Rating: Aspect Ratio: 2.40:1 Audience Rating: R (Restricted) Binding: Blu-ray Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, DTS Surround Sound, Dubbed, Special Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen Label: 20th Century Fox Number of Items: 2 Release Date: August 19, 2008 Running Time: 109 minutes Theatrical Release Date: April 11, 2008
Description: Disc 1: **Widescreen Feature Film **Commentary by Director David Ayer **Commentary by Forest Whitaker and Keanu Reeves **15 Deleted Scenes **10 Alternate Tracks **5 Vignettes **4 Behind The Scenes **Street Rules: Rolling with David Ayer and Jaime Fitz Simons **La Bete Noir: Writing Street Kings **Street Cred **Under Surveillance: Inside the World of Street Kings **HBO First Look- City of Fallen Angels: Making Street Kings
Disc 2: Digital Copy
Amazon.com: Street Kings is a pungent bouquet of corruption, violence, multi-ethnic mayhem, macho glee laced with macho angst, and fluorescently obscene dialogue from the mind of James Ellroy. Its hero, though he'd scarcely consent to be called one, is L.A. police detective Tom Ludlow (Keanu Reeves), for whom life is a wound that won't heal and dealing out retribution to scumbags is the ongoing treatment. Ludlow's the star player--"the tip of the [expletive] spear"--on a team of detectives headed by Capt. Jack Wander (Forest Whitaker). Coach Wander relies on his boys to keep breaking lurid cases, usually through deeply darkside underground work, and raising his profile with the media and the department. In pursuit of these goals, nothing is forbidden except failure, and the truth is what you make it look like. This is familiar Ellroy territory, most effectively translated to the screen in L.A. Confidential (which should have won the 1997 Oscar, and would have if Titanic hadn't launched that year). If you know Ellroy's ground game, you can pretty much guess where Street Kings is going, and where it's been. Still, the twists and torques of its urban road-rage course maintain the centrifugal force needed to hold us in our seats (a tactical highlight: refrigerator adapted as rolling barricade), and the movie keeps bopping us with oddball casting coups: comic Jay Mohr and Northern Exposure/Sex and the City veteran John Corbett as two members of Coach Warden's gonzo detective squad; Cedric the Entertainer doing a nicely nuanced turn as a street creature; Hugh Laurie doing a less-hyper version of House, if House worked Internal Affairs.
The problem is that director David Ayer keeps everything intense. Dialogues are shot too close-up, line readings are too strident, the action is too nonstop slam. Recall Curtis Hanson's L.A. Confidential and the mind's eye summons up a whole spectrum of existence, mood, place, historical period, emotional investment; there's an amplitude to the picture and the sensibility bringing it to us, something besides the whodunit and the endless rap sheet of nasty what-they-done. Everything in Street Kings is one-note, and with Keanu Reeves playing it implosive and Forest Whitaker locked in crazier-than-an-outhouse-rat mode, that's no way to stay the course. --Richard T. Jameson
Don't Even Bother This movie was so supremely disappointing. It was a convoluted mess. Keanu Reeves should stick to roles where he's not required to talk. When he opens his mouth his words sound like they were pre-recorded in a dark black hole. Stupid dialog, an unbelievable plot, contrived antagonism, and some of the worst acting I've seen since Arnold Schwarzenegger polluted the screen. These men are not "Street Kings" they are "Street Trash." Bad cops killing bad cops and the worst of the bad cops growing a conscience as he hunts down his own bad cop buddies. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
keanu a cop? loved keanu! couldn't image him as a cop, but he was great. He gets better with every picture. Movie has a good story line, hard to follow at first. had to watch several times to hear everything and catch every-thing. good character for keanu. good maybe for a second movie! It's nice to know that maybe men have a hard time getting over things in life. looking forward to his new movie coming next - the day the earth stood still. perfect part for mysterious keanu. I've seen the preview and it looks fantastic! Can't wait! Bette
Fast shipping and perfect condition The package was sent on time and as described. Nothing wrong with the disc at all.
Leave the lights off for this part of the police world "Street Kings"--James Ellroy--deepest corruption, unrelenting violence, hidden acts, provocative coverups--this is a world that Joe and Julia Citizen will never see. The average citizen might assume corruption in police departments, but will never ever guess its extent as "Street Kings" shows.
Governmental and military black ops are kept secret with no written records in efforts to make a dent on destroying evil (philosophically speaking) in the large world. "Street Kings," through the pen of James Ellroy and the direction of David Ayer, exposes a layer of police work that parallels that of black ops. Written records are required in this case but highly filtered and altered.
Keanu Reeves is a surprising choice as Tom Ludlow, police op extraordinaire, but quite convincing as the take-no-prisoners kind of guy--one of the Street Kings of the police underworld. However, his work eliminating evil is protected by his boss, played his usual soft-spoken way by Forest Whitaker, the king of the Street Kings. Perhaps not playing his role viciously took the onus off his character's ultimate revelation.
Once the first scene rolled with its explicit violence and the take-down by death of vicious thugs, the tone of the film is set. Tom Ludlow shows his mettle and his job--ridding the world of dark evils. At a group gathering of police ops for ritual drinks, Ludlow again shows his nature--roiling underneath a seemingly calm exterior, willing to act NOW, and barely containable by his boss, Whitaker's character.
On the other hand, Whitaker shows his hail-fellow-well-met persona, appreciative of Ludlow's work to enhance his own political inside clawing to the top. By movie's end, we see just what Whitaker's character truly wants.
The plot becomes quite complex with the addition of two men--Hugh Laurie as Internal Affairs and Ludlow's former partner who decides to go to IA. More murder, more mayhem. Through it all, believe it or not, Ludlow remains true to himself and to his necessary role in the police underworld.
The film's conclusion is a shocker. I never guessed the depth of the police underworld and what our guardians of the streets would do for public safety and their own protection. Is this just a movie based on a book for entertainment value, or does the movie show truth filtered through fiction?
A Fine and for once Socially Realistic Police-Thriller I was a bit sceptical before seeing this, as this type of film isn't exactly lacking in numbers, but I was pleasantly surprised. Forest Whitaker is (as always) a great actor with real depth behind his acting, and although Keanu Reeves doesn't come close to him, he does offer a convincing portrayal himself of a policeman walking the fine line between effective police work and breaking the law. The film shows us a few days of the life for Los Angeles policeman Tom Ludlow (Reeves) working in a very aggressive unit that make a habit of breaking the law in order to solve difficult cases. His boss Jack Wander (Whitaker) does his best to protect Ludlow from the consequences arising by his aggressive detective work. When one of his ex-partners ends up dead in the same shop that Ludlow was in, he's in for a world of trouble. Internal Affairs is ever closing in on him, while he's trying to find out who killed his ex-partner and why someone appears to be out for his life.
The film is actually surprisingly racialist, without doing the usual story from Hollywood where European-Americans are the devil incarnated while coloureds are angels in disguise. Of course, in reality, Reeves isn't of European descent, but he is supposed to be so in the film. He teams up with another fresh policeman of European descent, and they have to enter various black and Latino areas in their search for the two African-American killers of his ex-partner. The film manages to show quite realistically how explicitly racialist every other group except Europeans are, who in turn have only vaguely implicit ethnic mechanisms. If it is this bad now, what will it be like for us in 50 years with the way the West is going? To my surprise, the racialism of the African-Americans in the film is so explicit, at some point, a black man shouts to another black man to shoot Ludlow, he hesitates, so he shouts; "Shoot him! What are you; White?! Shoot him!"
Good acting, compelling story, no miscegenation and a very fast pace makes me give this 4 stars. Watch it, but beware that it is very violent.
Anything Goes Trivia
Trevor
Megaton Man
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