Prime Time: Street Kings (2008)

Street Kings is a gritty cop thriller directed by David Ayer AND based on a story by James Ellroy so, basically, if you go into it expecting any of the main characters to be unselfishly trying to do good in a bad world then you've never experienced any previous stories from either man. But, just in case there was any doubt, the whole thing helps to let viewers know what they are in for when the main character gets beaten up by some criminals and has his car stolen, which we then discover is all part of a plan to allow him to find where the crooks are holed up, with young female kidnap victims being kept there until they can be moved/sold on, and he then gets to barge in, shooting to kill. It's a good deed, in the grand scheme of things, but it's also symptomatic of the way this character acts. He'd also had a couple of drinks beforehand. He wasn't interested in any due process. He is someone being watched with interest by those who investigate such individuals in the force.

All of this is just a taster to the rest of the film, of course, which follows Detective Tom Ludlow (Keanu Reeves) as he tries to keep doing the job the way he prefers to do it while keeping himself protected from the prying eyes of those who want him stopped. He's helped in this regard by his captain (Forest Whitaker). One of the people wanting him stopped is his ex-partner, Detective Terrence Washington (Terry Crews), and things start to look even stickier for Ludlow when he and Washington are caught in a seemingly random shoot-out. Washington is killed, and Ludlow wants to find those who did it. But those who know Ludlow's behaviour think it would be best for all concerned if the case was dropped and the shooters left to get themselves arrested or killed on some other occasion.

Although there are plenty of beats here that are very familiar to fans of Ayer's work, Street Kings does turn into something slightly different once it gets beyond the opening third act. It's still not a million miles away from anything else the director has done, but the more interesting developments stop it from feeling like nothing more than a tired rehash. You can feel the Ellroy heart beating through most of the runtime, once that opening act is out of the way, and the screenplay put together by Ellroy, Kurt Wimmer, and Jamie Moss is solid in terms of the plotting, pacing, and character development. That's not to say that it's always believable, not at all, but there's enough done to distract you from/let you forgive the less believable moments.

Reeves is very good in the lead role. He's not on top form, it's always a bit harder to believe him as someone with such a murky moral code, but he does well enough. Whitaker gives one of his standard turns, and is good enough, and Crews does enough to show himself as a viable threat to his ex-partner before the shooting takes him out of the film. The rest of the cast is full of great performers, although they are not all used as well as they could be. Chris Evans is the highlight, playing the detective in charge of the shooting investigation who ends up allowing Reeves to help him, and you also get Hugh Laurie with an American accent again, and Jay Mohr, John Corbett, and Amaury Nolasco playing the main colleagues who accept that getting the job done often means breaking some rules. Naomie Harris and Martha Higareda try their best, despite being given the usual short shrift that women tend to get in Ayer movies, and there are good little moments for Cedric The Entertainer, Common, and The Game.

Far from essential viewing, this remains a film I would highly recommend to those who like this particular subgenre. The various elements are well put together, it feels like something a bit different for Reeves, and the ending is surprisingly satisfying when everything eventually pays off.

7/10

You can buy the movie here.
Americans can buy it here.

Hunter Killer (2018)

Gerard Butler. Gerard bloody Butler. I have been a fan of his for quite some time now, but he seems intent on making it harder and harder for people to say that aloud. His movie choices are often problematic, at best, and some could say that he seems to deliberately pick some of the worst scripts around when he gets his name in the hat for potential blockbuster material.

In this submarine-based action thriller, Butler plays Captain Joe Glass, a slightly unorthodox type who is trusted by the men around him because he may seem a bit odd but he gets results, dammit. He's given a crew and immediately sent off to Russian waters, where there has been an incident involving the sinking of both a Russian and an American sub. Knowing just what is at stake if the wrong move is made, Glass is determined to do whatever he can to get to the bottom of the situation and avoid an all-out war.

Written by Arne Schmidt and Jamie Moss, two men without too many scripts already under their belts, Hunter Killer is just about as lazy and incompetent as you can get, at least without descending to the level of the laughably bad. I'm not sure if the source material (a novel named "Firing Point") is any better but this certainly doesn't have me in any rush to check it out. Almost every line of dialogue is a cliché, and director Donovan Marsh doesn't think he should do anything in his role to help distract viewers from that. He adds to it all, if anything, with every decision made, taking his cues from the back catalogue of Tony Scott and Michael Bay when it comes to moments that show slick and powerful military action but forgetting to keep things orderly when it comes to the geography of the action sequences.

While there's supposed to be tension under the water, there's also supposed to be some tension on land, as a small group of soldiers (led by Toby Stephens) attempt to get in and extract a Russian president being held against his will by the individual who wants to start the war. One decent sequence aside, involving an enemy sub hidden under a large ice glacier, no tension is to be found once the plot starts to unfold. There are also no characters to care about, and the ending is laughably bad.

Butler is still a decent onscreen presence, making this just about bearable, and the cast is rounded out by Stephens, Michael Nyqvist (also a highlight, playing the rescued captain of another submarine), Common, Gary Oldman, and Linda Cardellini. I like all of these people when they're in half-decent movies. This isn't even a half-decent movie.

The submarine movie subgenre isn't the biggest one around, by far, but I guarantee you that almost any other film you can think of featuring periscopes, men getting tense while standing quietly in a floating chunk of metal, and radar screens that go ping and bloop, will be better than this. That even includes Down Periscope.

3/10

Dive in here.
Americans can buy it here.