Street Kings 2: Motor City Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		2.0

Street Kings 2: Motor City Blu-ray Movie Review

Another straight-to-video crooked cop drama.

Reviewed by Casey Broadwater April 21, 2011

Let’s get this out of the way straight off the bat—Street Kings 2: Motor City is a sequel in name only. Other than the fact that both films are about police corruption, there’s nothing that connects Motor City to it’s Keanu Reeves-starring predecessor. A single actor returns from the first film’s cast—minor player Clifton Powell as Sergeant Green—but it’s never explained how or why he left the LAPD to come to Detroit. Not that it matters. This movie might as well be set in a different solar system for all that it ties in to the first. As is the case with most straight-to-video cash-in sequels, quality nosedives in every category. The script is a tangle of cop movie clichés. The direction is lifeless. The cinematography takes on a distinct made-for-TV look. And instead of A-listers Keanu Reeves and Forest Whitaker, here we get a slumming Ray Liotta and Shawn Hatosy. No, I’d never heard of Hatosy either, but apparently he’s a regular on TV’s Southland, which you’d probably be better off watching. I hear it’s a decent police procedural. Street Kings 2? Not so much.

Ray Liotta, phoning it in.

The film blows its proverbial wad in the first scene with a massive “drug deal gone bad” shootout sequence that would’ve better served as a climax. Here, we’re introduced to Detective Marty Kingston (Ray Liotta), an undercover cop who may or may not have some dirty money in his pockets. I don’t think it’s necessary, but I’m going to go ahead and throw up a big red spoiler alert now, as it’s practically impossible to talk about the film without giving away a twist that occurs early in the film’s second act. “Twist” is actually a rather generous word to use, because frankly, we’re talking about Ray Liotta, and how often does he play a by-the-book good guy? The film proper opens three years later, and Kingston—who limps after catching a bullet to the leg in the shootout—pays the bills by giving elementary school assemblies as McGruff the Crime Dog. He’s pulled back into the action, though, when his former partner, Quintana, is shot and killed in a drive-by. Petitioning to work the case, Kingston is partnered with homicide detective Dan Sullivan—a wet-behind-the-ears rookie who’s gung-ho about tracking down every lead—and the two discover that Quintana was secretly taking extortion payments from a number of seedy nightclubs. The plot thickens—gels into a sticky goo, more like—when two of Kingston’s other buddies from the undercover unit turn up dead just days before they were set to be interrogated by Internal Affairs. Ready for the twist? I’m warning you, it’s a whopper: Kingston is behind the murders. Shocking, right? I would’ve never seen that coming.

Like I said, this isn’t much of a twist; it happens early in the plot and the rest of the film plays out in a kind of mutual cat and mouse game, where Kingston closes in on the fact that Sullivan is closing in on the fact that Kingston is the killer. The two spend most of the movie trying to outsmart and outpace one another, and although this may sound mildly thrilling on paper, it’s actually quite tedious. Why, you ask? I’m not sure where to begin. I suppose we could start with the obvious: Motor City is constructed almost entirely out of worn-out cop movie conventions. A world- weary veteran with a few skeletons in closet paired with cocksure rookie out to save the world because of some trauma in his past? Man, I’ve never heard that one before. I was holding my breath waiting for Kingston to drop the classic “I’m too old for this shit” line, and while he didn’t actually say it, his perpetually tired expression did all the talking. Liotta is supposed to come off as menacing—a good cop gone bad—but he just looks bored and slightly ridiculous, jogging through the movie in sweatpants and a black hoodie. Worse, Shawn Hatosy has about as much screen charisma as a brick wall. You almost forget he’s there, and he’s supposed to be our hero. Even late in the game when—dum, dum, dum—it gets personal, Hatosy can’t muster the energy to look genuinely angry or vengeful.

The film was directed by Chris Fisher, who brought us S. Darko—the dreadful straight-to-video Donnie Darko sequel—so that should give you some idea of what caliber of filmmaking you can expect from Motor City. His crucial mistake here is that he keeps the tone way too serious. I’ve always felt that if you’re tasked with making a straight-to-video sequel, you should at least have some fun with it. Mix it up. Do something different. Mimicking the tone of the first film just illuminates how sub-par this one is. Motor City’s script is dull throughout, but occasionally dips into cringe-worthily bad territory, like when one corrupt cop, speaking to the madame of a massage parlor about the prostitute he’s about to hire, tell her to “make sure her pooper’s clean.” Pooper? Really? It’s bad, but it’s not so bad it’s good bad, which means you can’t even enjoy it ironically. This general sense of boring ineptitude creeps throughout the entire production. The action scene choreography is stolid and poorly planned. The characters are hum-drum stereotypes. You’ll greet the various turns of the plot with a dissatisfied sigh and an “of course.” The way the film delivers information to the audience is woefully uninspired. In one scene, a wrongfully accused perp talks about how he couldn’t have committed the murders because he was kidnapped and tied up in “some garlic stinkin’ place, man.” A few scenes later, Sullivan realizes something’s up when Kingston’s kid mentions his grandpa’s in-the-middle-of-nowhere farm: “The whole place reeks of garlic, and I hate garlic.” Over-obvious much?

Street Kings 2: Motor City Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Street Kings 2 rolls onto Blu-ray with a satisfyingly crisp 1080p/AVC-encoded digital-to-digital transfer. The film was shot using the Red One camera—which tends to produce a more naturally cinematic looking image than some other digital rigs—and the high definition picture is seriously sharp. Every divot, pore, and wrinkle on Ray Liotta's iconically craggy face is visible for our inspection. Suits yield the texture of fine, individually discernable fibers. The detailing on cars and pistols is clean and precise. There are the odd soft shots, but most of the film displays brilliant clarity. Color is similarly strong, with warm skin tones, vivid primary and secondary hues—see the American flag draped over the coffin surrounded by lush green cemetery grass —and a keen sense of contrast. While deep and pristine during daytime scenes, black levels can get somewhat hazy and noisy during darker sequences, although shadow detail is generally strong. The film sits on a single-layer disc and features a relatively low bit-rate, but I didn't spot any overt compression issues, like banding, blocking, or excess noisiness. Aside from some (very) minor aliasing in a few shots, I really can't drum up many complaints. Street Kings 2 looks more like a high-end cable TV drama than a feature film at times, but the movie's cinematography certainly transfers nicely to Blu-ray.

Street Kings 2: Motor City Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

For a guns-a-blazin' cop drama, I thought Street Kings: Motor City's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track was somewhat restrained. The opening "drug deal gone bad" sequence features gunfire popping off from all sides—quite loudly—but after that the mix gets significantly more tame. The rear channels are mostly used to bleed quiet ambience into the rears, along with occasional music, and there are few cross-channel effects or discrete directional sounds. The gunfights later in the film are almost exclusively squashed into the front and center channels, leaving us with no real sense of immersion. What the track does have is a surplus of low-end rumbling; the subwoofer kicks in often to underscore the "danger" and "tension." Jon Sadoff's score, while unmemorable, at least sounds good, with plenty of clarity and dynamic reach. Dialogue is also clean, clear, and easy to understand throughout. If you need or want them, English SDH, Spanish, and French subtitles are available in large white lettering.

Street Kings 2: Motor City Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Deleted Scenes (1080p, 2:25): Two short, inconsequential scenes.
• Murder Scene Deconstructions (1080i, 12:10): A trio of behind-the-scenes featurettes showing how the murders of Quintana, Fowler, and Rogan were filmed.
• Creating a Convincing Cop Story (1080i, 5:12): The director and co-writers talk about researching the characters.
• An Explosive Opening (1080i, 4:59): A quick sequence about the shooting of the "drug deal gone bad" opening.
• Motor City Setting (1080i, 4:37): A profile of Detroit as one of the film's main characters.
• Weapons Check Personality Profile (1080p): A remote control-based quiz that determines what firearms you'd be likely to carry based on your answers to a few law-enforcement related questions.

Street Kings 2: Motor City Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Unnecessary straight-to-video sequel, thy name is Street Kings: Motor City. I'm not sure how or why this film even got made. Did the first Street Kings really warrant a follow-up? If you're a fan of cheesy, predictable crooked cop thrillers you might find momentary enjoyment in just how true-to-formula the film is, but the movie takes itself far too seriously to be watched for laughs. Motor City might have been better the filmmakers had chosen to satirize overplayed cop movie clichés instead of relying on them entirely. Unless you're a huge Ray Liotta fan, I'd skip this one entirely.