Au bout de la nuit

A man wakes up in the morning with a very pessimistic, worn-down, can't care about anything expression. He sleeps with a gun in his hand. He doesn't care about anything that happens to him or anybody else. Now…where have we seen this before? Many times, over and over again in cop movies. Basically, David Ayer's Street Kings is just a retread of what other cop-corruption movies have done in the past. But what it does is cleverly blend them all together to create a story that may not be pumped full of intelligence, is compelling enough to keep us guessing at least most of the way through.

Street Kings stars Keanu Reeves as the stereotypical don't-care-about-nuthin' police officer. His wife is dead and he's often used by his boss (Forest Whittaker) for taking down bad guys. When Reeves becomes suspected in the murder of his former partner (Terry Crews), the common tales of betrayal, corruption, and loyalty come up as Reeves takes the law into his own hands, blood is shed, shells are emptied, and the whole cycle starts over again until a conclusion is reached.

Yes, there is nothing in Street Kings that I call original, but then again, there are few movies these days in the early years of the 21st century that are. Hollywood seems to have lost its nerve for newer, bigger ideas and is just going back over the movies that made big bucks in the past. But Street Kings is effectively made. I really liked Keanu Reeves as the pessimistic cop, I enjoyed the other actors in their performances and roles. The action is hair-raising. The setting of a world of corruption and hatred is well realized with the script. The dialogue is oftentimes very vulgar, sometimes over the top, but that can be looked over. And like I said earlier, even though the plot elements have been used over and over again, the screenwriters wield it just write so that you'll have several guesses about what happens next or simply no idea whatsoever. So, while it's not a great movie in any regards, Street Kings is a fun, shoot-'em-up action picture with good performances and lots of adrenaline and therefore, gets a recommendation from me for members of the action movie fandom.

(Synopsis) Tom Ludlow (Keanu Reeves), a veteran LAPD Detective, works in a Special Vice Squad Unit in Los Angeles. Ludlow has been suffering from depression since his wife died. On top of that, his former partner, Detective Terrance Washington (Terry Crews) is murdered by two gang members. Ludlow goes on a wild and reckless quest through the mean streets of Los Angeles to track them down and get justice for Washington. Captain Jack Wander (Forest Whitaker) is Ludlow's supervisor who must keep him from going over the edge and out of the cross-hairs of Internal Affairs Captain James Biggs (Hugh Laurie).

(My Comment) Keanu Reeves and Forest Whitaker were excellent in playing their parts. In the first 10 minutes, we get to see how good Ludlow is in using his guns. The movie races at such a fast pace, and it is so intense at times that you don't know who is the good guy or the bad guy. There are some great shootout scenes, and whatever you do, don't get in Ludlow's way, because he will take you out. Usually, the police have this cop culture of protecting each other. After they imply that Ludlow had something to do with the murder of Detective Washington, he begins to question his loyalty to his fellow officers, especially, when they hang him out to dry. At that point the movie gets real interesting. The only problem I had with the script was that it put the tough cop Ludlow in a gloomy mood the whole movie. I would have preferred him to be a cop with self-control and strength of mind. If you enjoy cop dramas, you will like this one, because it has so many twists and turns and back stabbing to keep you interested and wanting more. You will love some of Ludlow's interrogation techniques of the bad guys. (Fox Searchlight, Run Time 1:49, Rated R)(8/10)

An extremely violent thriller about a jaded cop including hair-rising scenes , gruesome crimes and breathtaking chases. This nail-biting thriller packs plot twists, noisy action, pursuits , shootouts, and continuous intrigue .An undercover cop, LAPD detective Tom Ludlow (Keanu Reeves) , disillusioned by the death of his wife, is implicated in the murder of an officer and must struggle to clear himself. Captain Jack Wander (Forest Whitaker) always covers for Ludlow, as do even his somewhat jealous colleagues. Along the way , Tom is confronted by his former partner, Terrence Washington (Terry Crews) . After technically excessive violence against a vicious Korean gang during the liberation of kidnapped child sex slaves, Ludlow becomes the target of hotshot Internal Affairs captain James Biggs (Hugh Laurie) , who feels passed-over after Wander's promotion to chief. But some members of the elite task force find themselves being taken down one by one . When Tom is wounded , at the Hospital he's healed by a particular nurse who turns out to be his girlfriend, Grace Garcia (Martha Higareda). Later on , Detective Tom Ludlow meets Detective Paul Diskant (Chris Evans) and both of them join forces to investigate the sinister events. Ludlow works his way through the twisted rungs of the police and the deadly streets of Los Angeles for answers that only lead to more questions. And other cops and members of drug gangs are also gunned down . Their City. Their Rules. No Prisoners.

Nice action film displays action-packed, thrills , fast-paced , shootouts , wild fighting images , police brutality and spectacular chase sequence in South Central . James Ellroy wrote the surprising screenplay in the mid-1990s with the same formula of his previous works and inspired by the O. J. Simpson trial. James Ellroy's script for Street Kings (2008) bears certain resemblance to the screenplays for L. A. Confidential (1997) and Dark Blue (2002) . It's a noir movie whose plot is really complex and twisted , the ordinary issue in which certain law enforcement members suspected of being corrupt who are slain one by one and a deranged cop is given a major murder case by a corrupt commander/supervisor who sends him on a wild goose chase looking for fictional suspects and/or pinning the crime on criminals with prior records, only to learn that his boss is the real culprit. While the film was praised for its acting performances, action sequences, and dark tone, the script was criticized for its clichés about police corruption. Keanu Reeves is nice giving an efficient acting as a ruthlessly efficient, unorthodox undercover cop and haunted by the death of his wife . Keanu even did all of his own stunts in the film with no stunt stand-in. And a fundamental fun is to guess which prestigious , famous actor appears here and there, showing his charm and acting skills, including the following : Hugh Laurie , Chris Evans, Cedric the Entertainer, Jay Mohr, Terry Crews , Naomie Harris, Common , John Corbett, Amaury Nolasco, Michael Monks , Clifton Powell , among otheres.

This bone-chilling motion picture was professionally directed by David Ayer , though it has too much dark scenes , and it was shot in grueling 42 days . Ayer is a prestigious writer and director with successes enough , writing or directing films as : Fury , SWAT , Training day , The Tax Collector , U-571 , Fast and furious saga, Suicide Squad , among others. The film is followed by an inferior sequel, ¨Street Kings 2: Motor city¨ (2011), released direct-to-video in 2011 by Chris Fisher with Ray Liotta , Shawn Hatosy , Scott Norman , Clifton Powell, Kevin Chapman . Rating : 6.5/10 . Decent thriller.

I didn't go into Street Kings expecting a masterpiece, and I didn't get one. What I did expect is what I got, more or less: a competently made corrupt cops drama that throws on some heap-loads of stereotypes (not just racially or ethnically but just movie stereotypes, which may possibly be true to form them), and even crazy hysterics. If there is any significant achievement it's in taking the cop movie into such depraved depths it's like looking at a very entertaining infected boil: you know it'll pop any minute, and the pus might just run out a little bit here and there till there's more to squeeze out. There's almost an underlying current of hopelessness that gives the movie some intellectual lift, but at the same time it's such a time-waster that unless you're hardcore fans of the actors it's just about worth a rental.

Keanu Reeves goes from wooden to soggy-bottom wood as a cop who has been doing some dirty tricks to catch the bad guys lately (like setting up two Koreans- who are bad dudes for sure- by having them jack his car and then catching up with them to pop caps in their behinds), and he might be ratted out by his former partner. But when his partner is killed in very conspicuous circumstances, he goes to investigate it further while on a quasi-probation for even being at the scene of the crime (the crime, by the way, has one of the cheesiest "don't die on me" moments I've ever seen, laughably bad in how it's executed, no pun intended). Now, the conclusion shouldn't be at ANY surprise to anyone in the audience who's at least seen ONE other work by James Ellroy, the film's co-writer.

What does give it just a bit of extra lift is the extreme quality of the conclusion, how things seem so ridiculous that in any other hands this would be total nonsense. David Ayer, the director (and writer of Training Day, the perennial new millennium corrupt-cop saga), does have a good handle on the material though, even with ham-bone performance; Forest Whitaker is one of them, sadly, as he basically retreads his persona from The Last King of Scotland as the "King" of the corrupt cops. There is some not too shabby work, like a nearly phoned-in-from-House performance from Hugh Laurie (not unappreciated if you are a House fan), but it's mostly from supporting players like Jay Mohr in odd mustache and Common, the rapper, as one of the 'thugs'. It all kind of blends together as a pulpy orange of a B movie, good for something to not ponder too long over, but not as horrible as you might expect for a genre piece. It's a flavor of the season.

This is an actors film, the plot is straight down the line, but the stars of the film make this a thoroughly entertaining movie.

The film wastes some opportunities by under utilising the 'squad'. The squad has some good actors in it who aren't given enough time to shine.

Otherwise its lots of fun :)