Cop movies are hard enough to do considering that it’s probably the most frequently used profession in fiction; there are just so many clichés that one has to navigate in order to create a compelling story. Well, Street Kings is concerned with none of that. It wholeheartedly embraces the clichés to the point that I don’t even think the filmmakers know they were using them. Really, that’s the only explanation for how a perfectly good story about police corruption in our decaying modern cities filled with pimps and drug dealers got so ruined.

Detective Tom Ludlow (Keanu Reeves) is a hard-boiled cop that plays by a set of his own rules. He’s always on the cusp of getting his badge handed to him, but his patient Captain, Wander (Forest Whitaker), is there to pull him back from the edge. This time though, it’s Internal Affairs that’s after Ludlow, with the ambitious Capt. Biggs (Hugh Laurie) looking to use Ludlow’s grey-coloured service record against him. Ludlow thinks his ex-partner Washington (Terry Crews) is ratting him out, but when he confronts Washington, Ludlow is instead witness to his brutal murder. It looks bad for Ludlow, so he teams up with Detective Diskant (Chris Evans) to clear his name.

In the previous paragraph there are no less than a half a dozen cop movie conventions. The lead cop is always a few synapses shy of being exactly the type of criminal he pursues and this behaviour is usually precipitated by the loss of a close family member, probably the wife. There’s always an Internal Affairs guy that’s “trying to help him” by getting him to turn on his corrupted unit/boss/department/all of the above. And there’s usually a partner who’s either suspected of being a rat, or known to be a rat, or otherwise later revealed to be corrupt in some fashion. By my count, Street Kings was covering all bases except for the guy that’s shot three days before retirement… until it’s revealed that Washington was actually three days from retirement.

Now, to be fair, recent films like Training Day and The Departed, as acclaimed as they were, are actually pretty formulaic. The difference: performance; the acting in those movies is so good that any problems structurally can be forgiven. On the surface, Street Kings’ cast should make everything okay, especially the presence of Forest Whitaker. Poor Whitaker, he had two modes in this think: quiet and angry. Meanwhile, Hugh Laurie was practically playing House without the limp and Keanu Reeves makes one of the most implausible alcoholic, borderline sociopathic cops ever. This is one of those movies were the actors, when all else fails, turn to shouting and overacting to get their point across.

If there’s anything worse than having to sit through something so contrived, it’s seeing it in the end as all the plot threads are wrapped up in a neat little bow. It’s a good thing then that the action in this movie is at least a stable element because otherwise, you’re sitting there thinking about why someone made this movie for the millionth time. I’ll just take it as further proof that some things never go out of style, and will always just look worn.