It’s not hard to imagine how Street Kings came to be: celebrated crime novelist James Ellroy wrote a script exploring issues of the law, morality, and redemption, and the studio brass had it reworked until all that heavy thematic stuff was pushed as far as possible to the back burner to make way for more gun violence and terse macho posturing. The film peels back various layers of corruption until you get to the deep, dark center, and while there is certainly something compelling in this idea (it worked beautifully in Chinatown, a film to which this one owes a debt), the way it’s executed suggests that any real moral questioning just grist for the action mill. Plus, it’s hard not to see where it’s heading from early on, making the dramatic climax fundamentally anticlimactic. (Hollywood Jewel 16, Waco, TX)