Bruce Willis. Nick Nolte. Ray Liotta. Kurt Russell. Mel Gibson.

To most of us, these are the names that conjure up images of hard-drinking, head-busting, rule-breaking, been-there, done-that, got-the-dead-wife-to-prove-it loose cannons.

But Keanu Reeves? Whoa... Dude.

And lo, casting the bodacious 43-year-old as world-weary alco-cop Ludlow leaves a surfboard-sized credibility gap at the heart of David Ayers’ LA murder mystery.

Showing fewer signs of Martin Riggs than mild rigor-mortis, Reeves' hungover plod somehow manages to single-handedly blow away a gang of Korean kidnappers and emerge a hero… after manipulating the crime scene.

But a tip-off from his former partner Washington (Terry Crews) puts dogged Internal Affairs investigator Biggs (Laurie) on his tail. It doesn’t help that Ludlow is at the scene when Washington is machine-gunned to death during an apparently random robbery.

While his boss Captain Wander (Whitaker) deflects the heat, Ludlow is put on desk duty where he forms an unlikely alliance with Diskant (Evans), the detective assigned to the Washington case.

Following procedure like Britney Spears follows the Highway Code, their unorthodox investigation reveals a network of corruption that hits them (or at least their suspects) like a copy of the LA Yellow Pages to the head.

Macho stuff, this. Bullets rip, blood flows and brotherhoods are broken while women merely simper (Ludlow’s naughty-nurse girlfriend) or grieve (Naomie Harris’s widow).

You can almost see the writers (Ellroy, Kurt Wimmer – creator of sci-fi mish-mash Ultraviolet – and first-timer Jamie Moss) charging at one another with false antlers in a challenge to come up with the toughest soundbite.

“These dudes is monsters,” says Cedric The Entertainer as a disappointingly unentertaining informant. “If they can’t f*** it, rob it or kill it, they don’t want to know it.”

Yet the script still pulls punches. The racial tension that charges early scenes quickly dissipates and Ludlow’s alcoholism never presents the slightest hindrance.

Ayers maintains a good speed, slickly moving through the gears while keeping the corpse-meter running.

But his casting rap-sheet is lengthened by two rappers, a comedian trying to play straight, one of the Fantastic Four, and a bloke whose most famous film role entailed marrying a big, fat, Greek lass.

At least Hugh Laurie keeps his House in order.

Sadly, his presence is a reminder that routine clock-punchers like Street Kings really have to raise their game if they’re to reach the standards of small-screen cop shows like The Shield and The Wire.

Elliott Noble