Direct-to-Video-Sequel Theatre: "Street Kings 2: Motor City"

Let's see how I did in my predictions:

1. Ray Liotta is going to have retired because of the death of a family member and he'll be a total mess. False: Ray Liotta was shot in the knee while ripping off high-level drug dealers and semi-retired to a life of McGruff-like mascot suit duty (though he seemed to love it) before... well, you'll see...
2. There will be a sequence where they are at the undercover officer's funeral, and Ray Liotta flinches during the honor guard salute (that was in the original). Half true: after the first detective is murdered, there is an honor guard; no one flinches though, so we can't give them two (for flinching)
3. The conspiracy will go all the way to the top! Mostly True!!! About 30+ minutes into the film, it is revealed that the man in the hoodie methodically murdering narcotics detectives is...spoiler alert, and shut up, like you're going to see it... Ray Liotta's character, Marty Kingston!
4.  Shawn Hatosy's character will ultimately be involved in the conspiracy and will totally bite it in the third act (ETA: Or maybe not...after all, Chris Evans-not-Pine was an Innocent and died while helping Keanu). Good thing I gave myself an out: Shawn Hatosy's character, Det. Dan Sullivan, actually uncovers what his partner has been up to and... things get murky, but it is implied that he may actually have determined he was going to give Marty a pass, but then Marty explodes Dan's car... which actually was about to be driven to the pregnancy doctor by Dan's 7-months preggo wife. Awk-ward. So Dan naturally gets that super-determined Hatosy glower on his face and goes hunting for vengeance... which shakes out about how you would expect when a guy has killed another guy's pregnant wife (lesson of Street Kings 2: don't bank on pathetic apologies and the assumption that the younger guy is a "better" man than you, because he will stick bullets in you--more on that later--and you will be dead).

Things That Were Better In This Direct-to-Video Sequel Than the Original:

1. The acting: Like I said, I love Keanu, but Street Kings was not his finest hour (his finest hour: The Lake House and possibly Speed). The acting in the original ranged from Trying Real Hard to I'LL SHOW YOU OVERACTING! to What Am I Doing Here/I Am Basically House from the TV Show House to Common and The Game. I think Ray Liotta and Shawn Hatosy did a pretty good and believable job, even when the movie went off the rails in the last 15-20 minutes.
2.  Smaller character pool: Really, it was Dan and Marty, and most of the other characters introduced either supported those characters (the captain, the smug I.A. guy, the wives) or died at the hands of Marty. Ultimately I think this helped Street Kings 2 best the original when it came to The Conspiracy. Remember in The Negotiator, when the conspiracy only involved one top guy and a handful of foot soldiers? In Street Kings, freakin' everyone, save Keanu as the mark and Chris Evans-Pine as The Innocent, was in on The Wall Full of Money.
3. The lack of awkward, shoehorned-in, grody racial slurs and references to rape: it's almost as though the sequel makers saw the original and were like, "Eew, that was gross; let's not do that." There was one scene at a brothel and a few scenes at strip clubs, but both sort of stood to demonstrate how yucky some of the cops were. Though the wife roles were diminished, they're not the myriad model cattle-call casted girlfriends that showed up in Street Kings. Charlotte Ross was age-appropriate and byooootiful as Ray Liotta's wife, and the actress playing Dan's wife was pretty but not in the way ladies in a rap video are "pretty." No one was threatened with rape, and objectification and gratuitous sex and nudity was kept to a tasteful minimum. Feminism at work, sort of!
4. Instead of a lot of splatter violence, there were a few sequences of genuine suspense: in particular, the scene where Marty meets up with Dan late at the office, and you know Marty's gut instinct is telling him that Dan is on to him, and Dan is lying just credibly enough to make his way out of the office, but Marty goes with him, and is totally giving him the Ray Liotta is Crazy and Keeps a Copy of that Unlawful Entry Script Around look that makes me want to wet my pants in fear... pretty impressive, direct-to-video sequel; pretty impressive.

You know, I think "serviceable" seems like one of those backhanded compliments like "workhorse" and "adequate," but really: how much should one or does one expect from a direct-to-video sequel? But this wasn't a terrible or even mediocre movie! It was actually serviceable.

Kind of disappointing, really.

Back to the two main actors: I can't stress how thoroughly creepy Ray Liotta is in that one scene. I caught him in Turbulence one fine Saturday afternoon, and he can do a different, much louder and hammier kind of creepy, but in this, he was following along the spooky Goodfellas "good guy gone way wrong" path, and it was skin-crawly. And he took a page from the William H. Macy in Fargo book and just went balls-out pathetic in his final scene, which is pretty gutsy.

Hatosy wore a variety of very nice suits, vests, and tie clips. It looked like he lifted all that stuff from the set of Public Enemies (a film I have yet to see...uh, probably won't ever see, more like). He did a fine job with the heavy lifting as well as the smaller moments, like acting drunk (a lot of actors super biff that) and seeming mildly annoyed with his wife for her hospitality to his new partner. His best scene was probably the confrontation with the pillar of the community/prostitute frequenting badass cop where he walks the fine line between deference and doing his job and knowing the whole thing stinks to high heaven but is sort of intimidated by the badassness. I also liked the scene where he finds cash money in a crime scene ceiling, and there's a very ambiguous moment where you are unsure whether or not his character planned to pocket it. Hear that, Original Street Kings? Ambiguous character moments.

Also, he made that thinky valley with his forehead a lot. Never Botox, Hatosy. You'd break my heart.

Example from Southland

The one moment that I found unintentionally funny (as opposed to the 42 times something in Street Kings was unintentionally funny) was the confrontation scene between Dan and Marty. Marty is holding a gun on Dan as he drives him to his death, presumably--when will murderers in movies learn to just drive themselves; unwilling chauffeurs are the number one cause of movie car accidents--and a furious, grieving Dan threatens to track down Marty's wife and "stick a bullet in her." I wasn't sure if it was a goofed line that was left in for a "natural" feel (that...doesn't seem likely, since Dan and Marty had a getting-to-know-you convo early in the movie where I'm pretty sure Liotta and Hatosy did a little improv/loosey-goosey delivery to make it more natural) or if it was an intentional line like the William H Macy* line in Boogie Nights about his wife in the driveway with an ass in her cock. If the latter was the case, it sort of fell flat, which was pretty weird in a climatic chase-crash-OMG scene.

Anyway, I'll hold out high hope for the direct-to-sequel to Sniper starring Billy Zane. Street Kings 2, even with your promising Cadillac font in the beginning credits, you were not disappointing enough.

*That's two semi-related William H. Macy references; you all owe me a delicious ice cream sundae.