Street Kings is a 2008 crime thriller directed by David Ayer, from a story by James Ellroy and a screenplay by Ellroy, Kurt Wimmer and Jamie Moss. It runs 109 minutes and stars Keanu Reeves as Tom Ludlow, a vice detective implicated in the murder of another officer, alongside Forest Whitaker as Captain Jack Wander, Hugh Laurie as Internal Affairs Captain James Biggs, Chris Evans, Common, The Game, Cedric the Entertainer, Terry Crews and Naomie Harris.

Before anything else, a piece of information that reframed the whole thing for me. David Fincher was in negotiations to direct this. The project was originally titled The Night Watchman, developed at New Regency and Warner Bros from Ellroy’s screenplay, with Fincher attached. That version of this film never happened, and what we got instead is a competent David Ayer picture. Which is fine, and which is also a genuinely interesting glimpse of a road not taken.

I think this was a perfectly fine movie.

It had an incredibly stacked cast. House was in it, playing a wise captain of Internal Affairs, and I use that description deliberately because 2008 was the absolute peak of House. Reviewers at the time made the same point, noting Hugh Laurie was right at the height of that fame when this came out. They also, almost without exception, noted that he is criminally underused here, which I would agree with. He is excellent in every scene he gets and he does not get many.

The director did exactly what needed to be done at the time it needed to be done. I was not surprised by anything story-wise at any point.

And I do not mean that as harshly as it reads, because it appears to be the near-universal reaction. One reviewer described Street Kings as the quintessential Dad Movie, the sort of thing you stumble across on basic cable at eleven at night and end up finishing even though you saw the corrupt captain twist coming from a mile away. That is an exact description of the experience.

It is worth knowing that David Ayer wrote Training Day before this, so Street Kings is a man returning to the precise territory he had already proven he owns. This was only his second film as a director.

Now, the body count, because this film functions as a machine for removing recognisable actors from the screen.

I got genuinely upset that Terry Crews got turned into swiss cheese. Chris Evans took a bullet to the neck hole, which is worth noting came three years before he became Captain America. Cedric the Entertainer got blasted. And Common had his head exploded by Keanu Reeves off screen, which strikes me as a waste of a perfectly good head explosion.