Street Kings, David Ayer, 2008

The plot of Ayer's film is pure Ellroy (the author gets story and screenplay credits), with Keanu Reeves' renegade cop Tom Ludlow drunkenly shooting up half of South Los Angeles to uncover inter-departmental corruption. As with much of filmed Ellroy, though, nuance is non-existent and the narrative tension seems hyper-compressed and, as such, flat. Further, Ayer's truly random supporting cast of John Corbett, Jay Mohr, Hugh Laurie, Cedric the Entertainer, and Common seem ill-at-ease in such white knuckle territory.