1. The good guy is a bad guy
A slightly racist, unapologetic dirty cop who frames minority suspects, fabricates evidence and drinks while driving. How awesome is that? How un-Hollywood is that? You don't need to be any more realistic than your protagonist beating a suspect with a telephone book for me. The fact that he is actually a corrupt drunk with no respect for the law makes him human, and therefore somewhat sympathetic. He is cut from the same the same moral fabric as Alonzo Harris from Training Day, but without the gambling issues, so imagine a white Alonzo wreaking havoc on the fiends of Los Angeles.

2. Short Attention span film-making
There is no wasted time, no padding, no effort to do anything that is not related to advancing the plot. In other words they don't cater to the kiddies and they don't try to make this movie "cool". I am sure there are holes, but if you throw yourself into it and try not to think too much you won't see them, and Ayers makes it easy to do that. It feels edgy and dangerous and grimy like it takes place in a city populated mostly by violent criminals who haven't showered in a month.

3. No games with the action
No cg effects, no slow motion, no faux-John-Woo nonsense as with Wanted. This is an honest-to-goodness grown-up crime movie that requires you to pay attention and in some cases to recall something from 10-20 minutes back. It's not at all a "smart" movie, but it does require that you remember stuff from time to time just so you know what's going on, kind of like a slightly dumber version of The Departed.

4. Forest Whittaker can act
I wouldn't have cast him in this, nothing about Ghost Dog says "police officer" to me, but he pulls it off. He makes a character that most actors would have played as a simple conniving thug into something much bigger, a megalomaniac, like a Bond-villain in a more realistic setting, which was a smart move. He kind of outshines Reeves in the last minutes which makes it seem like a slightly better movie than it really was.

5. You want him to win but you think he might die, but maybe not
This is the kind of movie where they might kill the good guy because he isn't so good. The writers manage to convince you early on that Tom Ludlow is heading to his doom, kind of like Billy Costigan. He is self-destructive and jerk which usually signals death, but he is going up against guys that are worse than him so you want him to live long enough to take them out. The cliches are there, but there aren't enough of them for you to get a solid feel for where they are going with the story.

6. Insignificant love-interest
She was cute, don't get me wrong, but not interesting, and I am tired of the standard recipe for for movie happiness which is to be embroiled in an emotional and sexual relationship by the time the credits roll. Supposedly it means that you are set for life, which perhaps people were naive enough to accept 30 years back, but it should ring hollow now. In fact, it should have been ringing hollow with American audiences for a while now. The good thing here is that the girlfriend character exists in this movie just so we know he isn't gay or a eunuch.

7. Dirty-cop movies are awesome
Seriously, this needs to be an official top-shelf genre, like "Western" or "drama". Hollywood needs to set itself a quota for movies with corrupt policemen. Imagine a protagonist who has to obey no rules, who can shake down or harass members of the citizenry with no fear of repercussions. The reason people like movie heroes is that they are tough where most real-life men would cower, they have the guts stand up to bullies. A corrupt cop, especially one written by James Ellroy is able to shoot the bullies and plant weapons on them to make it a legitimate shooting. That trumps mere guts.

8. Very reminiscent of LA. Confidential
In fact, Reeves' character is essentially the same as Russell Crowe's in that movie (also written by Ellroy) so if Street Kings did not take place in a different era it could almost be considered a sequel. They are both thugs with tempers who love violence. It also has the same complexity and seems geared to people over 20 who know what feels real as opposed to what looks pretty on the screen. Ok, I know that this means it's not original, but Hollywood doesn't remake this genre all that often so it feels relatively original.

9. Action hero from the 80s
Tom Ludlow (Reeves' character) is reminiscent of Martin Riggs, with a little Marion Cobretti thrown in, and both were reminiscent of Dirty Harry, who was an attempt to change the mold of the movie hero to fit the times. Your good guy has to be a little bit nastier, a little bit less honorable to fight monsters like Charles Manson or the Zodiac killer, people Rooster Cogburn and Sam Spade never had to deal with.

10. Keanu Reeves actually perfectly cast
He is wooden and comes across in most of his roles as not being very bright, but you get the feeling that this character isn't very bright either so it works out. Like I said, think Russell Crowe in LA Confidential. Also, on the occasion that the character has to express actual emotion, Reeves actually does a better job than in any movie I have seen him in to date.

Watch the trailer for yourself. Below it is a list of the clues to suck that I caught.

1. Dane Cook being Dane Cook
The pretend-cool, the glibness, the sense that everything about you is pure fakery, that, motherfucker, is why we hate you. Well, that and the fact that you stole jokes from Dmitri Martin. Those things are why America fucking hates you. I would love to be the one candle in the dark night proclaiming your talent against the jeers of the world, but you aren't talented, you aren't appealing, and I wonder why you still have a career.

2. "I'm Mr Right, just not Mr Right now."
How awful is the rest of the script that they put this shit in the trailer? This is somebody's idea of clever, and nobody making the movie called them on it. Right there you can see the level of humor they are aiming at. 12 year-old Hannah Montana watchers who know nothing of grown-up life.

3. All of the major "plot" points are in it
If your movie is not at all interesting or original, and the characters are in no way appealing, why do you want me to know about before I pay you money? I am not encouraging Hollywood in it's practice of making misleading trailers, but even if I were at some point to have found myself inclined to go see this movie based on the poster this trailer would have cured any curiosity I had. I already know I won't see Kate Hudson naked, and that her character has sex with Dane Cook's character, which kind of puts me off her.

4. Tripping
If you find people tripping over shit automatically hilarious I hope you live long enough to feel true despair and that you die a slow death every second bringing with it a new regret. Seriously, does no one know what funny slapstick is anymore? Find out who Peter Sellers is and watch his stuff.

5. I did not laugh, or smile or feel one remotely positive feeling as I watched it
It ends with a guy getting his eyebrow shaved off by accident. How is that funny? What in the whole fucking universe that is soon to explained by the LHC is there in that is even funny-like? If you know the answer to this tell me. If it happened in real life to a friend of mine and I was high on some really good shit, and he was laughing about it, I still wouldn't find it entertaining.

Highwaymen (2003)
BBB
Stripped down at 74 minutes, this road-movie is a legitimate thriller and surprisingly lacking in suck considering that it is yet another trip to the old serial-killer well. The twist here is that this one uses a car as his weapon of choice which I think fairly original, and considering how spare this movie is (looks like the El Mariachi budget), pretty well done.

Cleaner (2007)
This movie has one of those premises that is so good it's bad, so reasonable that it's like the perfectly told joke, or clockwork. You can look and marvel at how logical everything is, but then since there are no rough edges, there is nothing to make the good parts look extra-good. It's just smarter, more realistic, and considerably better-written than any thriller Hollywood has put out in the last 3 years, that's all.

In Bruges (2008)
The trailers made it look like some kind of wacky Irish comedy with bumbling quirky characters and humorous swearing. I can only imagine how disappointed the fat housewives of the midwest, hoping for a glimpse of Colin Farrell's buttocks, were when they found that not only does this movie have a coke-snorting racist midget and the murder of a child, it also has a prolonged, violent finale, where the coolest characters commit suicide. I imagine there was much disgusted walking-out in theaters all over America.

Shoot 'Em Up (2007)
A genuinely witty send up of action movies that was nearly as buffoonish as the trailers made it seem, which accounts for most of the bad reviews, it kind of went over everybody's heads. It's not easy to create a real movie with a real plot and a real bad guy while making fun of cheesy genre movies in which such characters might appear, but they pull it off. The action scenes are funny, ingenious, and yet still work on a Jackie Chan/Jet Li level.

Street Kings (2008)
See Review .

1. How they look
For one thing there are two funny-looking old guys playing cops in it. DeNiro looks like an old pederast, and Pacino looks deranged, also I can't imagine either one of them lifting anything that weighs more than 10 pounds. They look out-of -shape and decrepit.

2. The Gugino love-interest
There are two reasons a chick who looks like that, would be with a guy who looks like DeNiro, namely, money and religion, which you kind of throw out the window when you have him playing an old NY cop. He is not the member of a mormon cult and he is not a tycoon. Seriously, the first thing you wonder is how could she not do better?

3. Fiddy
Or "Curtis Jackson" as he likes to called when he acts. This is the gangsta you throw in to get the Scarface fans even more interested than they would have been otherwise, kind of like picking a hot chick as your running-mate. It's called "pandering", a word that should be used more often in American culture.

4. Serial Killer
The uninspired writer's fallback plan, when given a deadline for a story and can think of nothing to advance your plot, throw in a compulsive killer. It's a deus ex machina type of device, where you have a motive that everybody in the audience can relate to since they have seen many, many times before.  

5. The Action Scenes
The look like something from a TV movie shot in Canada, the kind of thing that makes CSI Miami look like Michael Mann's work. The whole thing looks slow and cheap, and like a vehicle to satisfy Pacino and DeNiro's remaining fans, which are mostly the guys who idolize gangsters and think Jason Statham is brilliant.