Street Kings (2008)
Directed by David Ayer
Tom Ludlow is a disillusioned L.A. Police Officer, rarely playing by the rules and haunted by the death of his wife. When evidence implicates him in the execution of a fellow officer, he is forced to go up against the cop culture he's been a part of his entire career, ultimately leading him to question the loyalties of everyone around him.
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5 films that influenced Street Kings
What critics say influenced Street Kings
Director David Ayer pretty much remakes "Training Day," which he also wrote, complete with a rogue Los Angeles police detective (Keanu Reeves), an idealistic sidekick (Chris Evans) and cameos from various rappers (Common and The Game in place of Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg).
It's familiar territory for director David Ayer, who wrote and directed Training Day: another odyssey of corruption and belated justice, seen through the eyes of world-weary flatfeet and the hero's naïve rookie partner (this time, Chris Evans' Det.
Crime novelist James Ellroy and Training Day writer David Ayer team up to produce a gritty cop crime drama that crackles with LA heat.
The press bio of David Ayer, who wrote Training Day and directed the new Street Kings (Fox Searchlight) from a story by James Ellroy, trumpets Ayer's gritty coming-of-age experience in Los Angeles, with the director himself extolling his "organic understanding of what's happening on the streets of L.A. on any given day."
Honestly, Ayer was a great choice to direct this film which together with the overrated “Training Day” which he wrote and the underrated “Harsh Times” which he wrote and directed form a kind of mad trilogy of human self-destruction.
"Ludlow is given the responsibility to erase those people who the powers that be deem unfit," said David Ayer (Training Day), the film's director.
Few cop dramas even try to equal Sidney Lumet’s classic Serpico, made in 1973 and still the leader of the pack as an exploration of police corruption.
It’s an interesting idea, and it certainly has some real-life precedent; Serpico (which is referenced during some dialog in this movie) is just one example.
Based on the novel by James Ellroy ("The Black Dahlia," "Street Kings"), adapted for the screen by Brian Helgeland ("The Postman," "Mystic River"), and co-adapted and directed by Curtis Hanson ("8 Mile," "Wonder Boys"), this 1997 combination police procedural and underworld exposé has already stood the test of time.
It’s basically an action picture juxtaposed with a pale mystery that admirers of L.A. Confidential could see coming back to 1997.
There's also a familiar template at the heart of Street Kings - familiar to anyone who's read Ellroy's L.A. Confidential, or seen Curtis Hanson's rippingingly good film version.
The original script was written by James Ellroy (L.A. Confidential) and is directed by David Ayer, who wrote Training Day and directed Harsh Times.
It's the Dirty Harry school of hanging judgment--the iconography of Eastwood and Bronson and Stallone in the '80s (culminating for the latter in the ultimate state-sanctioned vigilante, Judge Dredd)--and it's only really interesting for its popularity again amid the reign of a President who's modeled his administration after Reagan's.
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Director David Ayer (writer of " Training Day " and co-writer of " The Fast and the Furious ") also has been fingered as a scripting suspect, but he is not identified by name in the final lineup.
Ayer is a prolific screenwriter who digs cop stories (he wrote Dark Blue, Training Day, S.W.A.T., and The Fast and the Furious) and recently directed his debut effort: the seriously underrated Harsh Times.
The problem with the picture isn't the actors — although director David Ayer (who wrote "Training Day," but who also wrote "The Fast and the Furious") has somehow managed to compel Forest Whitaker to overact in the most alarming way, especially in his hysterical final scene.