'Street Kings' brings arresting realism to big screen

By Gene Triplett

Published: April 16, 2008

BEVERLY HILLS — Soft-spoken and self-deprecating Keanu Reeves seems the unlikeliest of casting choices for the lead in one of James Ellroy’s rogue cop epics. The author of such neo-noire page-turners as “L.A. Confidential” and “The Big Nowhere” always loads his stories with corrupt and violent men who give the badge a bad name. A Russell Crowe or a Viggo Mortensen would seem like smarter casting.

But the role of a hard-drinking, death-dealing detective in “Street Kings” was a challenge Reeves couldn’t pass up.

“Yeah, it was a great role and I really liked the story, and I guess it was kind of fun to be pushed to a place that I don’t normally live in,” he said during a press conference at the Four Seasons Hotel.

Reeves, who is very much a pacifist in real life, searched the crowded room until he spotted “Street Kings” director David Ayer standing in the back.

“David, you’ve called me a hippie, right?”

“That’s correct,” Ayers answered.

“Yeah, so the director’s calling me a hippie and, uh, I get to kill eight people,” Reeves said. “So it was a good role to play.”

The screenplay, based on an original story by Ellroy and written by Ellroy, Kurt Wimmer and Jamie Moss, centers on Los Angeles Detective Tom Ludlow (Reeves), who is finding solace in the bottle after the death of his wife, and routinely using deadly force to mete out justice in the city’s seedier districts. Although he works alone, he’s protected from the probing eyes of a relentless Internal Affairs investigator (Hugh Laurie) by the brotherhood of Ad Vice, a specialized unit of the LAPD headed by the powerful and enigmatic father figure, Captain Jack Wander (Forest Whitaker).

The Oscar-winning Whitaker said working with Reeves was “Easy. Nice. He was working really hard. This was an intense character for him. And so when we worked through the rehearsals and stuff on the set, he was sort of staying in that space. He had his advisors and cops around and stuff, talking to them and figuring it out.”

During the press conference, Reeves seemed almost reluctant to discuss his performance or his character, deferring on several questions to co-stars Jay Mohr, John Corbett and Amaury Nolasco who flanked him at the front table. But reporters persisted in coaxing the inscrutable star into talking about the extensive firearms training his fellow cast members and he underwent to enhance the film’s authenticity.

“What did I learn?” he said. “Practice, practice, practice. I needed a lot of practice. I wasn’t very good.”

But in a separate interview, co-star Chris Evans told a different story about Reeves’ weaponry skills.

“I tell you what, Keanu’s pretty handy,” Evans said. “The first day we went on the range, Keanu had been there a couple of days already because he had that scene at the opening. His gun was much more difficult to use than mine.”

Evans was referring to a sequence early in the film when Reeves’ character single-handedly takes on a houseful of child abductors in a graphically bloody shootout.

“I just wanted to be able to look like I knew what I was doing,” Reeves said. “So I had the benefit of working with (ex-LAPD/SWAT officer) Rick Lopez, and just practiced to learn some techniques, to learn some footwork and entrances, different kinds of reloads and all that kind of stuff.”

Director Ayer (“Training Day,” “Harsh Times”), who grew up on some of the meaner streets of L.A., also wanted Reeves and the rest of the cast to immerse themselves in the cop’s working environment, filming on an open set in some of the rougher neighborhoods of Lincoln Heights and the south-central areas of the city.

“He was awesome,” Ayer said of Reeves. “He was open to sort of learning about L.A. and we took him on a lot of ride-alongs, and then took him down to the streets and he had to meet a lot of people so he could get a sense of place and character and what goes on in L.A. He’s really a nice guy by nature, which was tough for me because I had to make him be really not a nice guy.”

Reeves, 44, has for years been trying to distance himself from the doofy teenage airhead character that made him famous in “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure,” and if he hasn’t already accomplished that goal, his gritty portrayal of Detective Tom Ludlow should finally do the trick. But Reeves doesn’t think the character is entirely unsympathetic by any means.

“I think ... we could recognize something about him that’s not necessarily in ourselves, but in the world,” he said. “It wasn’t specific, like, OK, what can we do to make him more likable. But maybe there’s some vulnerability. (I wanted to) make him understandable in some sense.

“When you look at Ludlow and he’s in his job, fighting, killing, punching — he’s his most alive and comfortable, and I think he knows that about himself, that he’s in a dilemma. And the consequences of the job that he’s decided to do — to be the point of the spear — has its living consequences. Because he’s all soft and vulnerable on the inside, but he’s gotta be something else on the outside.”

Despite his own pacifistic philosophies, Reeves believes violence is a necessary evil in certain situations.

“There’s a place for it, obviously,” he said. “And I think that’s another part of the line in this film. There’s a place where you need violent people. You need violence. But it’s a Pandora’s Box.”

Travel and accommodations were provided by Fox Searchlight Pictures.

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