Street Kings
| Street Kings | |
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Promotional movie poster
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| Directed by | David Ayer |
| Produced by |
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| Screenplay by | |
| Story by | James Ellroy |
| Starring | |
| Music by | Graeme Revell |
| Cinematography | Gabriel Beristain |
| Edited by | Jeffrey Ford |
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Production
company |
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| Distributed by | Fox Searchlight Pictures |
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Release date
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Running time
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109 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $20 million |
| Box office | $65.6 million |
Street Kings is a 2008 American crime thriller film directed by David Ayer, and starring Keanu Reeves, Forest Whitaker, Hugh Laurie, Chris Evans, Common and The Game. It was released in theaters on April 11, 2008.
The initial screenplay drafts were written by James Ellroy in the late 1990s under the title The Night Watchman.
Tom Ludlow (Keanu Reeves) is a disillusioned LAPD Vice detective working for a unit known as Vice Special and haunted by the death of his wife. Working undercover, he meets with Korean gangsters (whom he believes have kidnapped two Korean schoolgirls) in a parking lot, who are looking to buy a machine gun from him. After a vicious beatdown, the Koreans then proceed to steal his car but this was however planned and he has the cops locate the vehicle via GPS. Upon arrival at their hideout, Ludlow storms in and kills the four inside before he then locates the missing children after the shootout and making out that he killed the gangsters by returning fire. While the other officers in his unit congratulate him, he is confronted by his former partner, Detective Terrence Washington (Terry Crews), who no longer approves of the corruption as well as the deception and has gone straight, reporting the problems to Captain James Biggs (Hugh Laurie), of internal affairs, who apparently starts an investigation against Ludlow.
Believing that Washington was "snitching" on him, Ludlow follows him to a convenience store to beat him up. However, Washington is executed in the store in an apparent gangland hit albeit with heavy fire by two gangbangers under the pretense of a robbery. Though Ludlow is innocent and the two were working together to fight back, the surveillance video of the shootout shows him to have accidentally shot Washington while trying to protect him with his .38 revolver, which can heavily implicate him in the murder. The DNA of two criminals known as Fremont and Coates is found at the scene, as well as a large amount of cash in Washington's possession. It is assumed that Washington himself was corrupt, despite his seemingly changed attitude, and that he had been stealing drugs from the department's evidence room and selling them to Fremont and Coates. Ludlow teams up with Detective Paul "Disco" Diskant (Chris Evans), who has been assigned to the case to join him in his personal investigation.
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