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Keanu Reeves on Street Kings

Published April 9, 2008 in Movie Interviews
By Fred Topel | Image property of Fox Searchlight
Street Kings Street Kings

People still like to think of Keanu Reeves as the nice guy who can save the day, even though he's done movies like The Gift and The Watcher. Now he plays a dirty cop in Street Kings, who has finally realized what he's doing is wrong, only now it may be too late to go back.

Keanu Goes Dirty for Street Kings
"It was a great role and I really liked the story and I guess it was kind of fun," said Reeves. "It was fun to be pushed to a place that I don't normally live in. I guess [director] David [Ayer] called me a hippie. The director's calling me a hippie and I get to kill eight people. So that's a good role to play."

Tom Ludlow (Reeves) breaks the rules to get the bad guys, thinking the end justifies the means. While he does save innocent people, it is a slippery slope. "I don't think you can say that, depending on the context. The story of the movie is that if you do what Ludlow does, then that allows something else to happen. As a law enforcement officer, if you can control a crime scene and if you can make a crime scene not a crime, even if you're justifying your means to have your version of what's wrong so that it's okay to kill these people who have kidnapped and hijacked these young girls. But if I'm allowed to go do that, if I can fix a crime scene and kill these people who I don't deem to have the right to justice because they don't deserve it in my eyes, then what else can I do? It can get so corrupted. In the specific case of Ludlow, no I don't think you can justify them."



Nevertheless, the parents of kidnapped little girls may be happy he didn't wait for a search warrant. "That's part of what the story is to me, it's almost the extension of that. It doesn't matter what it is, it doesn't matter what happens. It's what it looks like. So if I can control what it looks like, if I can get away with what it looks like and not what it is then you can have a lot of problems. I think that can happen in the police force. That can happen in business. That can happen, I think, in any organized entity. In the end, does it justify the means? I think there are certain situations where that might be, but again like what one of the characters, Naomi Harris, says, 'Blood doesn't wash away blood.' A violent act against a violent act, I don't know if that puts out the fire violence or what that is. There's a place for it obviously and I think that's another part of the line in this film, that there is a place where you need violent people and you need violence. But it's a tenuous box."

Street Kings may be not the kind of sure thing at the box office that the Matrix sequels or romances with Sandra Bullock could be, but Reeves tries it all.

"To enter any project that you work on, you hope to realize the role, to realize the film and at the end of the day you have your personal journey and you have the work that you were a part of . I'm nervous about the film opening because you want people to like it and you want to see what it's going to be. That's what you hope for. In terms of measuring success, I don't know if that's a real thing other than I think that we all hope to have a career. So maybe that's one of the things that you measure success with. It's just one of those things that I guess you could look at from the money side too and the artistic side of it. I think that it's as complicated as life is. I guess it's also one of those things that you can measure if you don't have it. It's easier not to measure. If you don't get to do the work, if you don't get the chance, if you don't achieve what you hoped to achieve then you weren't successful I guess."

Street Kings opens to theaters on April 11th.

For the trailers, stills and more movie info, go to the Street Kings Movie Page.


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Fred Topel
Sources: Image property of Fox Searchlight
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