STUDIO: Fox
RELEASE DATE: August 19, 2008
STARRING: Keanu Reeves, Forest Whitaker, Hugh Laurie, and Chris Evans
WRITTEN BY: Jamie Moss, Kurt Wimmer, and James Ellroy
DIRECTED BY: David Ayer
FEATURES: Commentary By Director David Ayer
Picture In Picture: Under Surveillance
Street Rules: Rolling With David Ayer And Jamie FitzSimons
L.A. Bete Noir: Writing Street Kings
Street Cred Featurette
HBO First Look - City Of Fallen Angels: Making Of
Deleted Scenes With Optional Commentary
Alternate Takes
Vignettes
Behind The Scenes Clips
Theatrical Trailers

Keanu Reeves is not the first actor anyone thinks of when they think "bad cop". The typically soft-edged Reeves goes for something a little harder with the moderately successful Street Kings, a mixed bag of positives and negatives. It is tempting for this fan of James Ellroy to believe that the master of modern noir deserves most of the credit for what works in Street Kings (he wrote the original draft) and not the writer of Ultraviolet (Kurt Wimmer) or Jamie Moss, but there is an odd duality in Street Kings and not just in the cops who could be called both bad and good. There are ideas and elements at play in Street Kings that are interesting but the film is seriously miscast and some of the dialogue is absolutely horrific. The film is never boring, but it often comes off too cliched or derivative of better, similar films like L.A. Confidential and The Shield. Street Kings walks that line between thumbs up and thumbs down with the Blu-Ray presentation and the lesser threshold of satisfaction with the rental cost as opposed to going to the theater pushing these bad boys into the positive position.

Detective Tom Ludlow is cut from the same cloth as Michael Chiklis' Vic Mackey of The Shield or Russell Crowe's Bud White of L.A. Confidential. From scene one, you can tell that Reeves really has tried to make himself look like he could believably strike fear into the heart of a gang-banger. He's puffier and looks much more world-weary. The opening scenes feature him drinking, swearing, racially stereotyping, and even shooting child rapists before they shoot first. He's the kind of cop who doesn't ask questions because he's too busy planting evidence but he's also the kind of officer who most of us are too afraid we really need. With a seriously corrupt system, Ludlow gets the job done the old-fashioned way. Ludlow has been protected from Internal Affairs and reporters by a team that includes his captain (Forest Whitaker) and his partners on the force (which includes the most strangely-cast group of officers in Jay Mohr, John Corbett, and Amaury Nolasco). Tom's former partner (Terry Crews) is about to rat him out to IA, but he gets gunned down in an armed robbery gone wrong. Or did it? Ludlow starts to wonder who killed his former partner and why and a very Ellroy-esque web of corruption starts to unravel. Odd casting choices including Cedric the Entertainer, Common, The Game, Chris Evans, and Hugh Laurie pop up in the complex narrative.

The casting may be original, but the story for Street Kings really isn't. The opening scenes are absolutely riveting and should be enough for hardcore cop action junkies to get their rental money's worth. But after the robbery, Street Kings starts to become a little predictable and sometimes hard to swallow. There's not really a bad performance in the film - yes, even Keanu makes it work - but Whitaker and the scene-stealing Common stand above the others. If you're the kind of Blu-Ray buyer who demands originality every time you pop in a movie, stay away from Street Kings, but if you're okay with something that you've kind of seen before but done well, you'll be entertained for two hours.

And much more than two hours on Blu-Ray. Fox continues to be a leader in the format with both picture and sound and that's just the start with this excellent release. The new trend of a digital edition for your iPod or other device is included, as are hours of special features, many of which you can watch picture-in-picture with a great feature called "Under Surveillance". The picture and sound are the best development of Blu-Ray, but the ability watch special features as they pertain to the movie PIP is a close second to the technical advancements on the list of Blu-Ray coolness. No more jumping between menu and movie. It's great. And there's much more, including featurettes not available in Under Surveillance, and a commentary track by director David Ayer. Street Kings will build a following on DVD - I was surprised it didn't make more in theaters, so there are a lot of people left to see it and it's the kind of flick that always rocks on the home market - and the best way to see it is on Blu-Ray.