Movie: Street Kings

Yesterday, I watched Street Kings, mainly because, I have to admit, it has all these awesome names in it: Keanu Reeves, Chris Evans, Forest Whitaker, Hugh "House" Laurie, Amaury "Sexiest Man Alive" Nolasco, and all the "rapper-turned-into-good-actors" they could get to sign: Cedric the Entertainer, The Game and the lovely Common. And of course the super sweet Naomie Harris.
So yeah, I guess when you look at it like that, Street Kings sounds a little like some ridiculous, pretentious bellybutton-show.
But it was a really frikkin' good movie.

First of, the plot is much more thought through and moving than that of most "cop-movies": Detective Tom Ludlow (K. Reeves) is the guy in the force who'll "go where the law won't": he takes out kidnappers and says they shot first, he plants evidence and makes some money off it as well. But all in all, he's not the least sympathetic guy you can imagine.
Enter Washington (Terry Crews), Ludlow's former partner - who is not ratting him out to Internal Affairs.
So Ludlow, who really knows how to hold a grudge, dude, takes it on himself to have a little "fist-talk" (yup, I made that word up. I should get paid!) with Washington. But then, out of nowhere, two gang members appear, kill Washington and leave Ludlow as the prime suspect - at least until his fellow team partners, all under the protection of the all-forgiving Wander (F. Whitaker), fiddle with the evidence to make sure Ludlow was "only" the first cop at the scene.
Still, Ludlow can't rest there, and tries to find Washington's killer, and has to find out that not only he was being betrayed - but almost every cop in the city.

I always loved these sort of movies. You know, morality issues are always fun, but enter police officers, who are supposed to be so incorruptible, and it gets really interesting.
If you can stand a good deal of violence and a lot of naughty, naughty words (although it gets better as the movie progresses - talk about character development!) you should definitely watch this movie. It's super exciting and interesting, funny at time, and it even brought a tear to my eye.
Good stuff.

Konichiwa.