Review in a Hurry:  Blam, blam, whoa—no thank you, man. Keanu Reeves makes a surprisingly good thug-with-a-badge in this bad-cop, badder-cop thriller from director David Ayer (Harsh Times) and crime-novel legend James Ellroy. But the lively action scenes can't make up for some DOA dialogue and connect-the-dots plotting.

The Bigger Picture:  It seems like there's never a cop around when you need one. When we meet Det. Tom Ludlow (Reeves), he's busy setting up and then gunning down a Korean kidnapping ring, all at the behest of his slick superior (Forest Whitaker), a rising star in the department thanks to the antics of Ludlow's special unit.

Ludlow then has a tussle with his former partner (Terry Crews) and gets a visit from a smarmy internal affairs captain (Hugh Laurie), both of whom seem to think Ludlow's days on the force are numbered. When Ludlow's old backup is brutally murdered, his boss thinks it's a blessing in disguise and tells him to let the matter lie.

Of course, he doesn't, setting of on a twisted course for vengeance, which is a good long time coming because Ludlow is dense. It takes him an hour of screen time, some comically brutal violence and a half dozen bodies to figure out what anyone who's ever seen an episode of The Shield would guess right away. Do movie cops watch TV?

Ayer, who also wrote Training Day, obviously has a thing for black-hearted boys in blue, and Ellroy's a past master of the form (L.A. Confidential, The Black Dahlia). On paper Street Kings should be a bull's-eye, but the film double-crosses itself: one unnecessary plot twist too many, a bunch of eye-rolling lines the actors can't quite get their mouths around and too much time in the gutter when all the action's going on in the stars.

The 180—a Second Opinion:  It's way too easy to guess what's going to happen, but Street Kings offers some surprises in how things happen. And the performances are solid throughout; get past the heartbreak you feel when you realize the film's not going to be great and you might be able to call it good.