77% of the users who have seen (and rated) Street Kings on IMDB think its a 7/10 or better. (34% of press reviewers on Rotten Tomatoes)
To you guys, I say, you are on crack.
Let me start off with my biases. I LOVE Keanu Reeves. I cannot even say why. For those who say he is a terrible actor, I would ask, have you seen him in interviews? He’s the exact same way. So, I wouldn’t say he’s such a terrible actor, but that he in fact, is really unable to change his voice fluctuations the way you would expect of a “better” actor, even in real life.
Nonetheless, I love him (not literally), and he’s the only star whose presence makes a difference in terms of wanting to watch a film. Thus, that’s why I watched Street Kings.
There’s a good cast (or at least, well known) here, with Keanu (I wonder if he gained weight for the role, he looks more fleshy, but not necessarily fat), Forest Whitaker, Hugh Laurie (House), and Chris Evans (Fantastic Four), but Street Kings is a mess. It’s a police drama about bad cops, with one particularly bad (Keanu) cop (in this sense bad cop is someone who tries to do good things in a corrupt way) who realizes that he doesn’t think he is so bad or should be this bad after all. Time to clean up and do some good.
As the movie began, I started thinking, this must be a dream sequence. There’s something unreal about this, not quite right, so Keanu’s going to wake up, and that’ll start the movie. Never happens.
This movie is always missing something, some depth. Things are stated for you to tell you what is going on or why this has been happening, but what you see on screen doesn’t quite seem to say the same thing.
It’s supposed to be a dirty world, with tough cops and big stakes, but it doesn’t seem particularly “real” or “tough” to me even with all the violence and bad things going on. Keanu’s character, Tom Ludlow, has been affected from his wife’s death for years, but he doesn’t seem like a tormented soul to me.
You simply don’t have believable characters or circumstances, though if you read a plot summary, there’s nothing obviously bad about the movie.
Too bad.
I rate it 3/10. This movie is just boring, from its first 10 minutes all the way to the end. (3/10 is the lowest score I have given any movie on my IMDB history of 330 ratings. I don’t hate the movie, it’s just so boring, no entertainment value at all)
Here’s the trailer if you’d like to check it out:
