Street Kings: Motor City (2011)

The original Street Kings (starring Keanu Reeves and Forest Whitaker) obviously was succesful enough that it was necessary to make a sequel. The budget for this movie however is much lower and this movie has nothing to do with the original. As Ray Liotta is the only well-known actor I was wondering if Street Kings: Motor City is actually worth watching.

Street Kings is about the investigation of the murder of an undercover cop. Detective Dan Sullivan (Shawn Hatosy) is assigned to the case and is forced to work together with Marty Kingston (Ray Liotta). It doesn’t take long before you find out that Marty has something to hide and before you realise that this movie doesn’t have any surprises and therefore misses suspense.

The predictability allowed me to focus on the things that are wrong about this movie. The story seemed to be an “action movies template” which wasn’t changed at all. It’s the standard stuff, “two cops don’t want to work together”, “they start to bond”, one of them finds out that the other has a secret” and “the two cops have a confrontation”.
I wouldn’t mind this type of storytelling if it was brought in a funny, original or exciting way, but this just wasn’t the case. An example is the moment they get to know each other. Two times Dan says something about his family (I have a wife, my father is dead) and in both instances Marty answers with something like “that’s a coincidence, me too”. This type of dialog happens way too much and didn’t feel natural.
The movie is set in Detroit and I got the idea that in this city every cop is driving a classic muscle car. Of course the landmarks of Detroit are shown (like the old station), but this film could have been set in any other town.

Something which annoyed me various times was where the cameras were positioned. There was a scene where the main characters are driving. Normally you would show this almost from the viewpoint of each character, but instead the camera’s were placed on the mirrors. This made the cuts between the two characters feel unnatural, which made it feel more like an experiment and didn’t pull me in.

Street Kings: Motor City is a very weak “straight-to-dvd” sequel. I didn’t like the original either (gave that a 5) and this one is even worse. Before doing this film, director Chris Fisher has directed various episodes of Cold Case and Hawaii Five-O, which explains the whole tv-series feel the movie has. Avoid.

Score: 4