If TV's The Shield is hard-core cop drama at its finest (and according to most, it is), then Street Kings is it's limp, younger brother. To continue with the male physiology metaphors -- and why not? After all, this a very blokey movie -- it's not so much limp as impotent. Sure, there are impassioned moments but, for the most part, this flick shoots blanks.

Keanu Reeves plays crooked burnout, Tom Ludlow, who is neither likeable nor engaging. In fact, no one -- besides Ludlow's hottie with a body girlfriend -- is in the least bit palatable. Anyway, after a fellow cop gets blazed down in a convenience store, Ludlow packs his gats and sets out traversing the crooked path to roguh justice. It is indeed a path riven with plot twists, albeit ones dating back to the Middle Ages, and blood but such novelties are hardly captivating when you're serving up such underdone cinematic meat as this. Blame can be apportioned to numerous parties. First, the actors. Oscar-winner Forest Whitaker is a titanic disappointment as Keanu's boss (I sensed some gay undertones but maybe that's just me). He spends most of the film either barking cheesy quips or with his face set in open-mouthed shock mode. Hugh Laurie, as a straighty 180 cop, first appears in a hospital scene alongside Reeves. Uh, bad idea. Given his notoriety as House, you expect the poor typecast bastard to start playing guess the illness, not make with the CSI-speak. As for Keanu, he doesn't seem to really give a shit -- in fact, you could be forgiven for thinking he's still stuk in a matrix of sorts.

Director David Ayer, who wrote the magnificent Training Day, offers nothing close to magnificence here. The action, for some reason, is quite lame and the more than decent cast are in auto-pilot at the best of times. Finally, there is co-writer James Ellroy. He plumbs familiar depths with a corruption and grittiness leaden script but in this case, the depths he's plumbing are puddle-size. There ain't much to it and the points of interest that do exist are nothing new. Street Kings had the potential to be a great cop thriller but instead, it's a mundane lesson in how to waste talent. Soft.