Streets of Blood

Yet another film made bad by horrible casting choices. Seriously, how can you expect to sellout movie theaters casting Val Kilmer and Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson as your lead roles? To be honest, when I first heard of about this film I was surprisingly excited to see it. I've always liked Val Kilmer and thought this could actually be good. But of course the excitement didn't last long. This film is full of drawn out suspense, horrible acting splashed with horrible Louisiana accents and my favorite part of any film which is getting lost in the story. That said the 6 stars I gave for this film are strictly on the basis of its suspense aspect and any director having the kahunas to put 50 cent in their film should get just a little credit.

This movie left me bewildered and frustrated as all hell! The story had all the makings of a great corrupt cop picture. In the hands of a worthwhile director it might have even been worthy of a theatrical release. The talent was all there. The location and story were there as well. The director of photography should be charged with a crime for making the picture look like an eight year old with ADHD and a handycam shot it! This absolutely ruined everything from the start, and was distracting and throughout. Surprisingly, about half-way in, everything starts to click, the imagery is less annoying, and the story comes together. The director is horribly inept, but somehow they completed the picture. I feel bad for everyone involved watching the finished product. They also must have seen a vision in a worthwhile script, which was ultimately devastated by the hacks at Millennium Films, and the talentless director. So frustrating.

I saw this movie because I was interested in the plot and the cast. The "dirty cops" premise is lately becoming an exploitation, to mind come "Training day", "Dark blue", "Narc", and "Dirty". Unfortunately all these are far superior than this mess. The cinematography is nothing special, sometimes OK, sometimes awful. The story is quasi-complicated and fails to bring any tension whatsoever. The acting is not bad, but nothing special either. Val Kilmer, Sharon Stone and Barry Shabaka Hennley have little to work with. Biehn is pretty enjoyable. To me the biggest surprise was 50 cent - he wouldn't win any award for his acting here, but let's be honest, if I didn't knew he wasn't an actor but a gangsta-rapper I would have never guessed it. His character is supposed to be torn apart between right and wrong, but we don't really feel for him or never do we really see his inner struggle. This is however due to bad writing and is not Jackson's fault. He is not worse than any of the other actors in the movie, this could be due to the thin story, but still he does OK, no complaints here. Of course to all who know something about 50 cent, fans or haters, it is hilarious to hysterical to watch him run around dressed as a patrol cop. The dialogue is average. Now the action on the other hand, if not on par with films as "Heat", "Ronin", or even Michael Bay's flicks is actually quite well executed. The viewer is never confused who is shooting at whom and why, no guns firing 100000000 bullets without reloading either. The ending doesn't make much sense. The editing is good, no MTV-style quick cuts. Overall it is just a movie to kill some time with, but don't expect anything above average. If You are interested in the cast feel free to watch it.

You can like the faces involved in this dtv flick, but this "dirty cops" tale has all the twists and turns you're expecting or seen before countless times. It's a bit disjointed and they were obviously working with limited time, money, heck maybe an incomplete script.

In the midst of hurricane Katrina, Det. Devereaux (Kilmer) stumbles upon his former partners body in a warehouse and is oddly unphased by it. He gains Det. Johnson (50 Cent) as a new partner. They get intertwined with dirty cops who end up killing an undercover federal agent which gets FBI Agent Brown (Michael Biehn) involved. While Devereaux makes trips to the police therapist (Sharon Stone) as the usual assortment of police corruption & gangster bits play out.

What to take away from this? Quick paychecks for everyone. A Nu Image / Millennium Films dtv quickie. Kilmer & Biehn get to share the screen again. Stone doesn't get to make much of an impact with her character. 'Streets of Blood' features a poor ending, but Kilmer and 50 Cent became friends in real life so there's that.

Instead of watching this film I could go out and do something better like jogging,playing football... but instead of doing that I wasted almost two hours on this film.First of all I liked the music and nothing else.They tried to copy Training Day and Street Kings but they didn't succeed in that.Story is really confusing,there is no real hero in the film,everything is spoiled with corruption-I don't like that.And actors...50 Cent looked like a frightened girl,he has a poor performance in this film and what to say about Sharon Stone,I couldn't recognize her at first.She has lost all her sexuality and I don't know what happened with her acting maybe she forgot how to act.I love Val Kilmer but here-average performance.And in the end,I tried to find out on Box Office Mojo how much money they earned with this film and I found nothing,the film is not even listed there.That speaks for itself!