Street Kings (2008/20th
Century Fox Blu-ray)
Picture:
A- Sound: B+ Extras: B+ Film: B-
Riding
off the wave of Martin Scorsese’s brilliant adaptation of Internal Affairs, which was re-titled The Departed, comes 2008’s Street
Kings starring Forrest Whitaker and Keanu Reeves. This film attempts many of the same things as
it shows us the ongoing battle between police squads, internal affairs, and
criminals. One will quickly realize
thought the true superiority that a director like Scorsese has at translating
this to the screen with a script that continues to work hard and pays off
big. Unlike Street Kings, which starts off strong, but fails to go the distance
as it becomes too convoluted, contrived, and trivial to make it stand out among
the better films of its kind. Even
2002’s highly under-seen and still under-appreciated Dark Blue (starring Kurt Russell) managed to show just how blurred
these lines can be and yet remained neutral as well. There of course have been other films to hint
at police corruption as well, even Ridley Scott’s 1989 thriller Black Rain (already reviews twice on
this site) managed to do so, but again had a stronger focus in mind than
director David Ayers did here.
That
doesn’t mean that Street Kings is a
total failure, in fact much of the films highlights are surprises, like Keanu
Reeves, who dials in one of his more impressive performances and perhaps one of
his best to date. This comes as a
surprise for those that simply see him as a stand-in actor. Forrest Whitaker is equally impressive, but
this is not surprising for those who are familiar with his range, if you are
not as familiar than quickly snatch up The
Last King of Scotland and Ghost Dog:
Way of the Samurai to get a strong dosage of his abilities.
We start
the film off with Reeves as a hard-working LAPD detective/killing machine whose
antics are not overlooked as it seems he brings controversy to the squad by his
‘shoot first then ask questions’ policy.
He is protected by his Captain (Whitaker) who is proud of his ‘boy’ and
knows that he can get the job done, even when it’s messy. What follows though is a long run of
incidents that eventually puts the internal affairs office hot on the tail of
this particular police unit and then a series of killings that begin to raise
significant questions. Reeves is trying
to do his job, despite how unclear it seems at times, while everyone else is
out for themselves and at the same time the lines of who is good and who is bad
becomes highly irrelevant. There are
other strong performances throughout as well, but the script runs out of steam
just before it can truly make the payoff and sadly puts a strong contender of a
film into the enormous vacuum of long-forgotten films. The studio on the other hand is hoping that this
Blu-ray can reverse that fact.
The film
is presented in a strongly detailed and stylized 1080p 2.40 X 1 digital High
Definition transfer that certainly looks sharp and presents the film well. There are some spectacular scenes of L.A. at
night that look solid with super deep blacks and yet retain superb color
definition throughout. There are only a
handful of moments where the image looks a bit soft and even slightly less
sharp. In some respects it looks just a degree below reference quality in the majority
of scenes, even retaining much of the gritty look that the film intentionally
went for, although most will liken the film to that of 2001’s Training Day (actually better on HD-DVD
than Blu-ray, in separate reviews elsewhere on this site). Both that film and this one missed the boat
in some of the same aspects, particularly in how we do not really have a
likable character or trustworthy character throughout most of the film, making
it hard to really root for any particular agenda.
The
DTS-HD MA (Master Audio Lossless) 5.1 mix is intelligent, but unfortunately
suffers from time to time with an obnoxious distortion sound in the upper
frequencies, which could be a problem with this particular Blu-ray because it
was not as noticeable on the digital copy, but that is a different audio format
altogether, so it’s hard to say where the real issue is. Aside from that, there are some great moments
with action-intense scenes and the realism of the HD mix makes for an altogether
better experience.
There are
plenty of extras included as well including a commentary track, making-of,
documentaries, behind-the-scenes, deleted scenes, alternative takes, a writing
featurette, and many other little tidbits that help bring into perspective the
challenges of making this film as well as the process for making it that will
not only appeal to fans, but also those with limited interest. Recommended, but nothing that hasn’t already
been done before, or done better.
- Nate Goss
