Street Kings Reviews

This page contains reviews of the movie Street Kings.

A veteran Los Angeles detective who is framed for the murder of his former partner joins forces with a rookie cop to find the real killers.

The movie received an average rating of 32% of Rotten Tomatoes, and 54% on Metacritic.

• Variety: Street Kings Review
  • "... a brutal look at police corruption that allows director David Ayer and "L.A. Confidential" author James Ellroy to pool their deeply cynical insights."

• The Hollywood Reporter: Street Kings Review
  • "All genre requirements are here: a colorful cast of characters, swaggering machismo, sharp dialogue and a rainbow of ethnicity spread across the divide of good and evil. Plot twists are smart if improbable."

• The New York Times: Street Kings Review
  • "It's easy to laugh at Street Kings for its bigger than big emotions, its preposterously kinky narrative turns and overwrought jawing and yowling, but there's no doubt that it also keeps you watching, really watching, all the way to the end."

• San Francisco Chronicle: Cops Skirt Thin Blue Line in Street Kings
  • "...the story has echoes of the old Hitchcock number, in which a wrongly accused man looks for the real culprits, though with Ellroy telling the story, the plot has so many bells and whistles that you'd never recognize it."

• New York Daily News (4/5): Keanu Reeves is Ready for Police Action
  • "an enjoyably tough, blood-splattered action drama that revolves around the one good cop at its center."

• EW.com (C+): Street Kings Review
  • "Street Kings is more like L.A. Confidential reduced to a board game. The structure is in place...only there are so many scurrilous men pulling strings that we might be watching a parade of nasty puppets, with Keanu as the chief wooden devil doll."

• ReelViews (2.5/4): Street Kings Review
  • "In a way, cop movies are like romantic comedies - they only need to do one thing and, as long as they do it well, there's no need for them to stray from the one true path. Generally speaking, Street Kings abides by that maxim."

• Miami Herald (2.5/4): Street Kings Review
  • "If nothing else, Street Kings is perfectly passable filler to help pass the time while we wait for the return of The Shield."

• Newsday.com (2.4): Street Kings Review
  • "David Ayer, who wrote Training Day, directs with enough flash to keep the action crisp and nasty. But he can't swagger his way through Ellroy's swampy storyline, which traps its characters in cynicism and amorality."

• Cinema Blend (3/5): Street Kings Review
  • "Another convoluted cop corruption movie filled with unlikable characters and a dubious anti-hero who is only a hero because he seems to think he is, or because he shoots first."

• Premiere (3/5): Street Kings Review
  • "a bloody crime caper in a somewhat lackluster month, so if you're looking for some big, stupid fun, you could do worse than Street Kings."

• USA Today: Street Kings: A Criminally Bad Cop Thriller
  • "Street Kings wastes a moderately intriguing premise by filling it with laughably cliched dialogue, one-dimensional characters and implausible turns of events."

• Village Voice: Street Kings Review
  • "...while Street Kings pines for a gritty realism and a corresponding wised-up attitude about the thin line between cops and robbers, it's hopelessly quaint at its core. The movie kicks your ass and takes your name because it doesn't know what else to do."

• The Arizona Republic (2.5/5): Street Kings Review
  • "Certainly the action scenes pack a high-powered wallop. But really, Street Kings is just kind of silly - there are bad guys and worse guys."

• Film Threat (1.5/5): Street Kings Review
  • "...when the bar has been set as high as it has in recent years by the likes of The Wire and the aforementioned Training Day, wasting money and studio resources on a cliched rehash like this is puzzling, to say the least."

• WashingtonPost.com: Street Kings Review
  • "All the movie's treacheries, deceptions and story twists are marred by our lack of innocence. We see the big picture way before the characters do, and that pushes us right out of the movie and back into our seats -- the last place we want to be."

• MSNBC: Street Kings: Bang Bang, Dumb Dumb
  • "...has the unfocused energy of a pitbull pup; audiences aren't likely to be bored, but the experience does grow exhausting, particularly since the plotting is so plodding and obvious."