Keanu Reeves, Jay Mohr, Amaury Nolasco, John Corbett and Forest Whitaker in Street Kings. (Photo provided by Fox Searchlight Pictures)

The cliches and laughably hammy dialogue are scattered about just as liberally as the spent bullet casings in "Street Kings," an ultraviolent but tired bad-cop yarn -- and that's surprising and disappointing given that it comes from a story by "L.A. Confidential" writer James Ellroy, who also co-wrote the script.

Director David Ayer pretty much remakes "Training Day," which he also wrote, complete with a rogue Los Angeles police detective (Keanu Reeves), an idealistic sidekick (Chris Evans) and cameos from various rappers (Common and The Game in place of Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg).

Reeves stars as Tom Ludlow, who has long carried out dirty deeds for his dirty boss, Capt. Jack Wander (Forest Whitaker, eyes bulging and channeling Idi Amin once more). This is a guy who shoots first and then never even bothers to ask questions later, and his captain has always been there to back him up.

Ludlow slugs vodka nips to make his way through each day; it's how he copes with his wife's death. But when he's implicated in the murder of his former partner Washington (Terry Crews), a do-gooder who'd been snitching to internal affairs, he must do some investigating of his own to defend himself. (Washington is obliterated by a couple of machine gun-toting gangsters in the aisles of a convenience store; far-fetched manipulation of DNA samples will later come into play.)

Ludlow seeks out Paul Diskant (Evans, from the "Fantastic Four" movies), a young homicide detective who's been assigned to the case, in hopes of determining what evidence there is against him. Instead, what ends up happening is Ludlow drags Diskant over to the dark side of the thin blue line, schlepping the kid all over the city to watch as he whacks suspects about the head with a phone book, for example, to extract information from them. (The Game is believably thuggish as a San Pedro gang member.) Also among the supporting cast are the overacting Jay Mohr as a sergeant in a porn mustache and Martha Higareda as Ludlow's stereotypically saucy but long-suffering Hispanic girlfriend. ("Why can't you have a normal life like everyone else?" she pleads.) Cedric the Entertainer does get a couple of amusing moments, though, playing against type as a drug dealer named Scribble. Despite the large ensemble, this is Reeves' film; everything revolves around him, for better and for worse. As he grows older, it's easier to accept him playing haggard, seen-it-all characters, as he also did in 2005's "Constantine." But there's still something too boyish and lightweight about him to make us deeply feel his torment -- he's not quite a street king; he's more like a prince.

- By Christy Lemire / Associated Press