After Fantastic Four, Chris Evans Joined Keanu Reeves In An Underrated Crime Movie

There's no doubt that after donning the stars and stripes as Steve Rogers, aka Captain America, Chris Evans' career skyrocketed to an even higher level than before, leading to some of his best work. Before that, he was moving at a decent pace, which included time in the Marvel Universe taking on the role of Johnny Storm, aka The Human Torch, in the early 2000s "Fantastic Four" movies. Coincidentally, just as Robert Downey Jr. was suiting up in his Iron Man armor for the first time in 2008, Evans was joining a crime thriller packed with star talent, including Keanu Reeves, Forest Whitaker, Hugh Laurie, and directed by David Ayer.

With cinemagoers still hungry for Ayer's insight into life in Los Angeles after the groundbreaking thriller "Training Day," the hope was that he would deliver the same when he took the director's chair for "Street Kings." The film was his second venture behind the camera after the Christian Bale-starring drama, "Harsh Times," and came with the same level of corruption and crime as the movie that won Denzel Washington his second Oscar win (not that he's particularly bothered about it). 

Keanu Reeves played a struggling alcoholic and undercover cop, Tom Ludlow, who took Evans' straight-as-an-arrow cop, Detective Paul Diskant, under his wing to weed out the wrongdoers that are wearing badges and in cahoots with the criminals they should be catching. As far as Ayers' past work goes, it might not have been one of his best (or Reeves' for that matter), but it's not without its perks.

There are moments in "Street Kings" where Ayer is clearly trying to journey back to that same dirty, downtrodden, and treacherous take on the City of Angels that he introduced us to with "Training Day." Thugs and drug dealers are seen like animals wiping themselves out ("God willing"), while a permanently ticked-off Reeves as Ludlow stirs the pot the wrong way. He's Constantine, facing devils that are more human and include the likes of rap stars like Common and The Game, while an out of his depth Evans questions the laws that he's getting close to breaking himself.

For the Avenger to be, it's another decent example of the actor we now know he would become, running alongside Reeves, who's giving the bad cop schtick a go. "The Matrix" star isn't bad, but he's not great, either, lacking the kind of complex, morally ambiguous edge for the kind of character Ayer loves to include in his stories. Give "Street Kings" a rewatch and you'll see that the potential was certainly there for Evans to join the ranks of Earth's Mightiest Heroes. What's still unbelievably shocking is that a deceptively sluggish and worn-down Reeves would return to fighting form six years later as "John Wick," once again turning shooting droves of henchmen while dressed in black into a billion-dollar franchise. Woah.