bacon is magic

I went to see Street Kings today with a handful of co-workers tonight, as we happened to have 5 free tickets for the movie given to one of us. I found out that its official release was actually supposed to be Friday, making this a preview/first look screening of the movie 2 days before it’s official opening.

Thank god it was free.

My friend warned me about the movie, as he found the following excerpt from a review of the movie:

This thing you want that you think you want, you don’t want,” Reeves tells Evans’ character. To which Evans wanly replies: “You don’t know what I want.”

This part of the dialogue was stellar compared to some of the other dialogue in the movie. Right from the start, it sounds like the writers were confused and instead of writing a no-brains action movie (this is not a bad thing), they wrote lines that belonged to a Shakespearean play, and so you have characters trying to end sentences in what should be parts of soliloquies go beyond the realm of the ridiculous and well into the realm of OMGWTFBBQ. In fact, after the initial action scene, you are immediately treated to plenty of odd lines like this, including a scene where Terry Crews, playing Keanu Reeves’s old partner and now rival, awkwardly tries to finish an unreasonably long line in the middle of a heated argument.

I can’t blame the actors for this either; Keanu Reeves is… Keanu Reeves, which is what most people want out of Keanu Reeves, Forest Whitaker seems to try to make the best out of his shitty lines, and Hugh Laurie (House) does a good job of being House as a cop. It feels like the director is responsible for a lot of the odd bits of the movie.  Forest Whitaker plays Reeves’s crazysauce “don’t worry, I’ll fix it” boss, and in the early part of the movie, you can catch him in a prolonged “I’m incredulous!” head shaking (with no dialogue) while yelling at a subordinate for almost a full second - something that should have ended up on the editing room floor. There are gobs of awkward moments like this, like Reeves’s last fight scene, and you can’t help but wonder how much better the movie could have been if scenes were better coached or simply re-shot.

The movie has overtones of Training Day and L.A. Confidential, and it’s not surprising, as the director, David Ayers, wrote Training Day, and the writer of Street Kings (James Ellroy) also wrote L.A. Confidential. “A cop deep in the snake pit of corrupted cops” brings us the direct correlation with Training Day, and a lot of the twists and turns mirror those of L.A. Confidential (which is also about corruption… gee). The scene where Keanu Reeves is arming himself and preparing to confront two murderers gives off the exact same vibe as the scene in L.A. Confidential where Kevin Spacey and Guy Pearce are preparing to take on the corrupt cops, right down to handing the partner a shotgun.

But this then begs questions: How did this movie turn out so badly? How can the same guy that put together the intricate story of L.A. Confidential create a plot where you can tell who the mystery villain is after half an hour? Why does this feel like an 80’s cop movie, except more retarded? Why does Jay Mohr have an awful, unconvincing porn ’stache that just makes him look like a chester?

So, in the end, the movie feels like a recipe for dinner: take Training Day and L.A. Confidential and put them in a blender, add a couple of movie stars to the mix, then use all of that as sauce for a doggie lawn sausage, and you have Street Kings. In other words, all the good elements of the movie can’t cover up the taste or smell of its dog-shit core. But I will say this in its defense: sometimes dog-shit is funny, and this movie’s flaws and reasonably decent action scenes (the sound is good) make it ripe for open mockery with friends. I suggest waiting until this comes out on cable, then watching it with friends, a couple of beers, and a loud mouth.