Rating: 6 / 10

Starring: Keanu Reeves, Forest Whitaker, Hugh Laurie

Plot: When Tom Ludlow (Reeves), a vigilante LAPD officer, is implicated in the brutal murder of a fellow officer, he begins to question his loyalty to the police family that has protected him for so many years.

The good: “Street Kings” is a violent, run-of-the-mill crime saga from David Ayer, writer/director of one of Hollywood’s most underrated films, “Harsh Times.” He also wrote the modern-day-classic “Training Day.”

Although Ayer’s latest work is hardly on the same level as his previous endeavors, this L.A. crime drama snowballs all the ideas from past cop vs. cop dramas and adds a remarkable supporting cast.

Whitaker returns to his powerfully commanding “The Last King of Scotland” form in every scene he is in. He brings class to the film as a corrupt police captain who knows the darkest secrets of everyone in the precinct. His last monologue of the film could be considered Oscar-worthy, if Reeves’ dead weight didn’t “whoa” it up.

Also on point is Laurie (a.k.a. “House M.D.”), who plays an internal affairs investigator. Since this is Laurie’s first big film since “Stuart Little 2,” he probably won’t be working with a CGI mouse any time soon. Laurie brings a lot of “House” into his character, but this could also be mistaken as Laurie just playing an American.

Even supporting B-listers such as Jay Mohr and Chris Evans are nicely cast as fellow cops, as is rapper The Game, who plays a thug with a “f— the police” mentality. Seeing familiar faces certainly doesn’t hurt the uninspired feel the movie has when Reeves begins talking.

The bad: The film’s biggest fault was casting Reeves as a miniature-bottle-of-vodka-drinking, gun-toting and gang-member-killing badass cop. Try to picture the monotonic, baked-look on Reeves’ face as he plays a racist cop who doesn’t take anything from anybody. It’s hard to picture, I know.

Ayer had the awe-inspiring leads of Denzel Washington and Christian Bale to carry his last two movies. So why was a guy with five Razzie nominations for horrible acting cast as the person who holds “Street Kings” together?

It’s not enough to hear Reeves deliver lines like a high Ben Stein while other characters are dying. His character is unlikable; he’s a murdering, racist coward, but thanks to manufactured situations where disdain is supposed to magically turn into empathy, we’re supposed to like him because he’s finally “able to see.” The emotions are artificial to the extent of unintentional hilarity.

The lowdown: “Street Kings” is a decent urban crime drama with misleading trailers. If you’re expecting a gritty, Los Angeles-based gangland movie, which the thousands of previews on TV and the Internet have advertised, you’ll be sadly mistaken.

Instead, expect a violent look at crooked cops through the eyes of Hollywood’s favorite ne’er-do-well, Reeves. Unless there’s a bomb on a bus, or an alternate reality to do slo-mo in, Reeves is an unreliable actor, wherever he may “whoa.”