Hard to believe they're so nasty

Hey, who doesn't get up out of bed, stagger to the bathroom, hold a toothbrush in one hand and a gun in the other, and then puke into the toilet?

Well, OK, maybe not the gun. And maybe not the puking. And maybe not the liquor-store detour on the way to work, to grab a fistful of vodka bottles, the kind they give you on planes.

From the opening minutes of the hard-boiled rogue-cops drama Street Kings, it's pretty clear that Tom Ludlow (Keanu Reeves) is one messed-up dude. A Los Angeles vice detective with a stellar record of big-time busts and bravery (or craziness), this guy long ago forgot how to read the Miranda. Ludlow is more the shoot-first/plant-evidence-later kind of cop. And his boss, Capt. Jack Wander (Forest Whitaker), loves him.

Roiling with racial and ethnic slurs (Asians and blacks get the brunt of it, but nobody's spared) and alive with the crazy-quilt cacophony that is L.A. - the barrios, Korea Town, Watts, the dusty hilltops, the scuzzy mini-malls - Street Kings comes by way of mystery scribe James Ellroy (story and screenplay) and David Ayer, the Training Day writer taking his second stab at directing. (His first, Harsh Times, also set in L.A., with Christian Bale as a self-destructive Army vet, is well worth checking out.)

Street Kings, like Ellroy's and Ayer's aforementioned credits, delves into the inner workings of the L.A.P.D. - the maverick detectives, the culture of racism and corruption, the notion of loyalty over honesty. It's a twisted in-joke that, at the funeral of a fallen officer, the chief of police is played by Daryl Gates - the city's real ex-police commissioner, who long reigned over a notoriously unscrupulous department.

Street Kings is a good, compelling, violent picture, but it has its flaws, not the least of which is the casting of Reeves and Whitaker. These guys are actors, yes, and they're up for the job - and it's never hard to watch them - but they're gentle souls, too, you can see it in their eyes. The profane, possessed, take-no-prisoners attitudes they're required to take, to inhabit, don't come easy for either man.