If you can forgive its stale dialogue, which at times seems so egregiously leaden that it might have been better suited to a Mad magazine parody, Street Kings is a tense, aggressively absurd thriller that pits Keanu Reeves against a close-knit fraternity of rogue cops. Reeves, never a particularly expressive actor, is refreshingly animated as Tom Ludlow, a hard-boiled detective with violent streak neither he nor his fawning captain (Forest Whitaker, in typically boisterous form) seems inclined to curb. Based on a story by L.A. Confidential author James Ellroy, who shares screenwriting credits with Kurt Wimmer (The Thomas Crown Affair), the film subjects Tom to a series of genre clichés – close encounters with internal affairs, an unceremonious demotion to desk duty – but like the best pulp fiction, it’s trashy, fast-paced and impossible to ignore.