I was excited when I first saw trailers for the 2008 movie Street Kings. The movie is billed as a gritty cop drama starring Keanu Reeves, Forest Whitaker, and Jay Mohr. You can tell how gritty the movie is because Jay Mohr grew a moustache and curses a lot. Plus, there are confirmed cameos from rappers The Game and Common, and unconfirmed cameos from Jazze Pha as a minister with a heart of gold and Mannie Fresh as a manatee from the wrong side of the tracks.
Last night, Street Kings was on HBO. The phone rang – it was destiny. I accepted the charges.
The film was everything I had hoped for. The director subtly but effectively develops the main characters. For example, Forest Whitaker plays a streetsmart cop who runs the streets and has his ear to the streets and has a street named after him and owns a Tai Street jersey. He shouts things like “YOU WILL NOT @#$# GO OVER THERE YOU @#$@!!!!”. This man has an Oscar.
Keanu submitted a vintage performance. I don’t know what else is left to say about this man’s career. If ever there were a high-budget biopic about, say, a tree, Keanu has the acting range to knock that role out of the park.
The minor characters were also fantastic. The Game enters the movie by pouring 40 oz. malt liquor into his cereal. Next, he snitches to get Cedric the Entertainer out of jail. Ergo, Cedric is able to get out. Finally, Keanu beats him in the face with a phone book. In conclusion, if I was going to use one writing style to describe The Game’s role in this movie, I would choose “4th grade attempt at a paragraph”.
This one exchange tells you all you need to know about the writing:
Jay Mohr: I could tell you a million stories about [Keanu's character]
Woman: Yea? So tell me some stories.
Jay Mohr: Sorry, I don't kiss and tell.
Mohr exuded machismo like this until the very end. He was tough enough to brag, but he still had honor and decency, damnit, so he'd refuse to tell the actual stories involved. I loved his old show on ESPN Mohr Unemployed which I remember was about a stand-up comedian making topical sports jokes, but then the series ends after three episodes.
The movie ended around 2:00 am, and we were all happy with how the preceding two hours had unfolded. As I was scrolling through the HBOs, I stumbled upon The Replacements in which Keanu Reeves leads a team of nonunion football players to the playoffs. As one friend put it, “I thought I was going to sleep tonight. I guess not.”
Everything about The Replacements is great. If the only way I ever get to hear Summerall and Madden together again is when they are narrating Shane Falco’s first attempt at hooking up, then so be it. I wish they just looped in Madden quotes from the video games, such as “He kept looking for something to develop, but whap, he got developed!”
An wonderful night of entertainment from Reeves & Co. I sincerely hope that his career continues to flourish, if only for the slim possibility of “The Replacements 2: Crossing Da Line”.
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