Trivia / Street Kings

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• All-Star Cast: Forest Whitaker, Keanu Reeves, Hugh Laurie, Cedric The Entertainer, Terry Crews, The Game, Common and Chris Evans.
  • Also several good character actors like John Corbett, Jay Mohr, Naomie Harris and Clifton Powell.
• Creator-Driven Successor: To Training Day, which director David Ayer wrote. At one point, it was a full-blown sequel focusing on an older, more jaded Hoyt.
• Divorced Installment: At some point, the film was a direct sequel to Training Day, with the character of Ludlow being an older, more jaded Jake Hoyt who had ironically followed in Alonzo's footsteps.
• Fake American: Canadian Keanu Reeves and Briton Hugh Laurie as Tom Ludlow and Captain Biggs, respectively.
• Irony as She Is Cast: Ludlow is continually referred to by other characters as Caucasian, with the Korean gangsters being insulted by his (admittedly bluffed) assumed Racial Face Blindness, dismissing him as a "stupid white boy." Actor Keanu Reeves is of Chinese descent.
• No Stunt Double: Keanu Reeves did all his own stunts.
• Playing Against Type:
  • Leading man John Corbett and comedian Jay Mohr play a pair of psychopathic, would-be rapist Dirty Cops.
  • Terry Crews who has played in some very wacky comedies and sitcoms?? Plays a conflicted dirty cop who eventually comes clean.
• Throw It In!: The scene where Grill lands on the sofa and smacks his head against the picture breaking the glass was not scripted and David Ayer loved it so much that he left in the film.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The screenplay was originally written in the mid-1990s by James Ellroy under the title The Night Watchmen, and inspired by the O. J. Simpson trial and the Rampart scandal. He briefly considered turning it into a novel, but it ultimately sat on the shelf for almost a decade before being developed into a feature film.
  • Over the years, various directors were attached to the film; including Spike Lee, David Fincher, Oliver Stone, and Erik Van Looy. 12 Years a Slave scribe John Ridley penned an early screenplay draft that was ultimately unused.
  • Grace was originally a reporter rather than a nurse, who came under the ire of Wander's squad due to her investigations uncovering their corruption. Furthermore, her relationship with Ludlow was purely platonic.
  • There was a scene revealing that Captain Wander had been Ludlow's wife's secret lover, whom he blamed for her death by callously dumping her outside of a hospital after she suffered a brain aneurysm. Director Ayer cut the subplot, feeling it was too contrived.
  • A rough cut of the film ran just over three hours long, and had additional scenes developing Ludlow's relationships with Grace, Linda, and his squad. There was also a scene of the squad performing a bust together to establish their rapport and cohesion as a unit.

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