Dir. Antoine Fuqua USA 2010
Beginning with Training Day in 2001, director Antoine Fuqua and writer David Ayer began a cycle of visually realistic, but narratively ridiculous police dramas set in a hyper-stylized alternate Los Angeles where everyone is either a dirty cop or a Mexican gangbanger. Althought Training Day still holds up (mostly thanks to Denzel's Oscar-winning performance and a strong turn from Ethan Hawke), subsequent films by the pair, made together or separately, haven't faired so well. My dim memories of 2002's Dark Blue aren't particularly good and Ayer's 2005 directorial debut Harsh Times featured a great performance by Christian Bale and little else of note. Ayer drives his LA films to their inevitable nadir with Street Kings, while Fuqua relocates to New York City with Brooklyn's Finest. The results are...not great.
Street Kings stars Keanu Reeves as Tom Ludlow, an alcoholic LAPD detective still mourning the death of his wife. As the point man for an elite (aren't they always) vice squad run by his old friend Captain Jack Wander (an unbelievably hammy Forrest Whitaker), Ludlow's life begins to unravel when he becomes a suspect in the murder of his former partner (an unbelivably terrible Terry Crews) and the target of an internal affairs investigation led by Wander's rival (Hugh Laurie). With the help of the young homicide detective (Chris Evans) investigating the murder, Ludlow uncovers a police consipiracy that could...tear the department apart? Get him killed? Go all the way to the top? All of the above?
Street Kings was born in the late 90's as a script by James Ellroy (writer of LA Confidential) originally titled The Night Watchman. I wish that had remained the title, because it would have been way less awkward having characters shoe-horn in the phrase "The Night Watchman" than it was having to hear them keep talking about "Street Kings" and "Kings of the Streets". This film pretty much proves that the only reason David Ayer was successful before was because a) his previous films had decent actors to elevate his shitty dialogue and hackneyed premises and b) because The Wire wasn't around to show people how much better cop movies can be without ridiculous cliches. The film, like so many others, insulates the actions and motivations of police officers from the rest of the world to such a degree that it makes it impossible to take them seriously when they're abusing suspects, killing each other and generally treating LA like the wild west. The amount of cop-on-cop violence in this film outweighs the violence between cops and criminals by a large margin. If the events of this film were true, they'd probably shut down the LAPD and rebuild it from the ground up.
It's incredibly easy to make fun of Keanu Reeves, which is why I always felt kind of cheap doing it. And while he makes an effort here, getting his face all puffy to accurately reflect his alcoholism, he's just not believable as a badass in any kind of realistic context. It works in the video game world of the Matrix movies, but watching him spit ethnic slurs and kick the shit out of gangbangers just made me uncomfortable. He gets props for trying though, which is more than I can say for Forrest Whitaker, who gives an absurdly over the top performance here, bugging his eyes out, gesticulating wildly with his hands and breathlessly screaming most of his lines regardless of context. It ended up being kind of fun by the end, but it goes a long way toward making the movie completely unbelievable. Hugh Laurie and Chris Evans auto-pilot their way through the film and come out relatively unscathed (althought Evans character was given the dubious last name of Diskant, a desicion that seems to be exclusively motivated by the desire for Keanu Reeves' character to nickname him "Disco"). Of the few non-actors in the mix, Common acquits himself well, although his part amounts to little more than a cameo and Terry Crews really, really can't act. Also, you know who's really not believable as a violent, corrupt vice cop? Jay Mohr. Good job, casting director. Good job.
Although Brooklyn's Finest is certainly a better film than Street Kings, you can see how that's a bit of a backhanded complement. If anything, it's a more disappointing film because it's much more ambitious and stars much better actors, but still kind of blows.
Set in some theoretically crappy part of Brooklyn that I've never been to/may be entirely fictional, Brooklyn's Finest is an anthology film of sorts, following the lives of three NYPD officers who's stories end up intersecting in the same housing project. Ethan Hawke plays Sal, a narcotics detective who has been stealing money recovered during drug busts in the hopes of being able to afford a new house for his ever-expanding brood of Italian Catholic children and his sickly, pregnant wife (Lili Taylor). Don Cheadle is Tango, an undercover narcotics detective who has begun to lose himself in his longtime role as a drug lieutenant. Richard Gere plays Eddie, a single, alcoholic beat cop who's one week from retirement and passes his time with a beautiful hooker named Chantel. All three men must make difficult moral decisions as they struggle to keep themselves alive and protect those closest to them.
A more accomplished director than David Ayer, Fuqua brings a bit more skill to the table in Brooklyn's Finest. While stylized, the film is still set in something resembling the real world and even the supporting roles are filled with excellent character actors (For all you Wire fans out there, Omar, Wee-Bey and Clay Davis are all in this movie). The action is bloody and well-shot and the dialogue, while not Oscar-worthy, is far more passable than Street Kings. Unfortunately, the movie is not without it's other problems.
The biggest issue I had with this film was that it bit off way more than it could chew. At 2 hours and 12 minutes, it still feels thin and incomplete. This mostly stems from the fact that any of the three plotlines in this film could have stood on its own as a 90 minute movie and would have probably been better for it. Each of the stories is peppered with various cliches and problems, but mashing them all together only adds to this flaw. Furthermore, trying to give equal balance to the storylines completely screws with the pacing of the film, abandoning one storyline for the other two for twenty minutes or more. The fact that the stories have almost nothing to do with each other until the last 10 minutes of the film doesn't help either. I was able to see how each plot line could be interesting and was supposed to be interesting, but I was never really given enough time to latch onto one. I would say I found the Don Cheadle storyline the most compelling (probably because it featured the most interesting actors), but even that was like watching a watered-down version of Donnie Brasco. The Richard Gere plot had the most satisfying ending, but I've never found Gere particularly compelling as a actor and nothing he showed here did much to change that. I usually really like Ethan Hawke (and the actor playing his best friend, Brian F. O'Byrne), but I had a lot of trouble sympathizing with his character. The fact that his wife was being made sick by the mold in their house is legitimate on paper, but was kind of stupid in the film and I can't muster any sympathy for people who can't afford to raise 8 kids. Condoms aren't expensive and religious bullshit doesn't fly as an excuse.
Amusing side note: Wesley Snipes plays Caz, Don Cheadle's childhood friend/target, a man who was just released from prison and becomes increasing desperate in his efforts not to go back. Given Wesley Snipes recently publicized troubles and his pussy attitude toward the whole thing, it added a nice little layer that wouldn't have been present otherwise.
I wouldn't strongly recommend either of these movies, even with my somewhat forgiving standards for the genre. Checkout Joe Carnahan's 2002 gem Narc or Curtis Hanson's 1997 masterpiece LA Confidential if you're looking for a great cop movie. Or just watch The Wire.
UP NEXT: I saw the new Harry Potter flick this weekend as well as How To Train Your Dragon. I'm also sitting on two Akira Kurasawa film from Netflix, Stray Dog and Drunken Angel.
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