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Tom often takes the law into his own hand(gun)s

For his part, Tom doesn't see himself as any sort of hero. When his girlfriend (Martha Higareda) tells him that good can come from bad, he replies, "In my world, the real world, bad leads to more bad." Later, he says, "Everyone's out for theirs. It's the way of the world." Finally, when Tom asks one of his colleagues whatever happened to just locking up the bad guys, his colleague replies, "We're all bad, Tom."

For some Christian viewers, that line will have a ring of truth and may even help to turn this movie into a sort of sermon illustration. But the person who speaks the line does so mainly to justify his own corruption, as well as to justify the way that he has corrupted others such as Tom himself; that alone should give us pause before we accept the line at face value. And the fact remains that there are hints of goodness here and there throughout the film; however, as the death of Washington shows, the people who embody these qualities don't have a very high survival rate.

The bigger challenge posed by a movie like Street Kings is not whether everyone is evil—obviously, all real people have a mix of good and bad within them—but whether anyone needs to be evil in order to fight evil. The answer suggested by this film is not a particularly soothing one, but its deep ambivalence on this point no doubt reflects the morally confused times in which we live.

>Talk About It

1. Is Tom as a basically good person who does some bad things? Is he a basically bad person who does some good things? Is he something else entirely? What?
2. Do you agree with the corrupt cop who says, "We're all bad, Tom"? Why or why not? How do you understand the nature of evil? What about the nature of goodness? (See Romans 2:6-16, 3:9-20)
3. Tom's girlfriend says that good can come from bad, and Tom replies, "In my world, the real world, bad leads to more bad." Do you agree with one of them -- and if so, which one? Or do they both have a point? (See Romans 8:28)
4. Is it ever necessary to do evil in order to fight evil? If so, under which conditions? Is there a different standard for individual people than there is for government authorities such as the police officers depicted here? (See Romans 12:17-21, 13:1-7)

The Family Corner

Street Kings is rated R for strong violence (many people are shot, lots of blood flows) and pervasive language (lots of four-letter words throughout).

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