Star rating: ***
Dir: David Ayer
With: Keanu Reeves, Forest Whitaker, Hugh Laurie

FROM the writer of Training Day comes another expedition into the LAPD's murky recesses. This time it's Keanu Reeves playing against type as the cop finding it hard to toe the line between right and wrong. Based on a James Ellroy story, Street Kings pits Reeves's troubled detective and Forest Whitaker's police chief against a determined internal affairs investigator (an impressive Hugh Laurie). It's an efficient, predictable police procedural, with lots of testosterone and hokey lines like "You can't ride the tiger forever". Reeves, though, is a revelation. Older, wiser, and shorn of his pretty-boy looks, his heavyweight potential is plain to see.