Tweet      

3 Stars

‘Training Day’ scribe David Ayer’s 2nd feature is a slick, highly entertaining and sometime preposterous police thriller. Keanu Reeves is slightly out of his element playing Det. Tom Ludlow the loose cannon on an elite squad of outlaw cops. He is surrounded by a well cast line up of supporting character actors all of whom are uniformly strong. Whatever director Ayer lacks in film making technique he makes up for through his excellent writing. The script is very strong here, taking clever turns and capturing an authenticity in the way these types of people speak. However the story turns a tad ridiculous in the final act, when a negotiation turns into a standard issue (and poorly choreographed) shoot-out. This keeps it from scoring a direct bullseye, up to that point though the film is nearly flawless.

Director: David Ayer
Stars: Keanu Reeves, Forest Whitaker, Chris Evans