Writer-director David Ayer has certainly found his groove - gritty crime thrillers about morally tainted cops who bend the law to compensate for an imperfect legal system - but he's in danger of getting stuck in it. Having previously penned screenplays for Training Day, Dark Blue and Harsh Times, making his debut behind the camera with the last film, Ayer returns to the crime-infected streets of Los Angeles with Street Kings, a brutal journey into the city's underbelly.

Renowned novelist James Ellroy (L.A.Confidential) provides the creative spark for the script, co-written by Kurt Wimmer and Jamie Moss. However, the set-up and its bloody pay-off are all familiar, even down to the fractious relationship between Forest Whitaker's corrupt mentor and Keanu Reeves's sharp-shooting protege.

The hard-boiled dialogue is suitably snappy ("Do the department a favour and wash your mouth out with buckshot!") but fails to draw blood in the hands of a cast whose imposing physical presence dwarfs any acting prowess.

Oscar-winner Whitaker relishes his role as the biggest, baddest apple on the top of a rotten barrel, but even his eye-catching performance is table-thumping fury without the emotional firepower.

Street Kings revolves around veteran police Detective Tom Ludlow (Reeves), who is still reeling from the death of his wife, numbing the pain with regular swigs of vodka. Tom is at the beck and call of his commanding officer, Captain Jack Wander (Whitaker), often going undercover to infiltrate crime syndicates then taking the bad guys down with extreme force.

He rarely plays by the rules, making him a prime target for Captain James Biggs (Hugh Laurie) and his colleagues in Internal Affairs, who must question the moral shades of grey in the department.

Ludlow's colleagues in the specialised Ad Vice unit - Detective Dante Demille (John Corbett), Detective Cosmo Santos (Amaury Nolasco) and Sergeant Mike Clady (Jay Mohr) - begrudgingly cover for him because results make them all look good. However, their patience is wearing thin.

In the aftermath of a shout-out, Tom learns that his former partner Detective Terrence Washington (Terry Crews) is planning to rat him out to Biggs. Soon after, Tom is embroiled in a grocery store hold-up in which Washington is brutally slain and he, rather conveniently, survives unscathed.

Street Kings is an amalgam of Ayers's earlier films, sparking momentarily to life in the heated exchanges between Reeves and Whitaker. "What happened to just locking up bad people?" asks Tom. "We're all bad people Tom," replies Captain Wander, stating the obvious.

Laurie's performance is a shadow of his eccentric medic on the hit television series House, manipulating events by planting the seeds of suspicion in Tom's mind: "Did you ever ask yourself, is Washington dead because he was dirty, or because he came clean?"

Action sequences are competent if uninspired, culminating in a showdown that sees one member of cast being hand-cuffed to the scenery to prevent him chewing it.

Blessed with the same moribund wit and explosive violence as his Oliver Award-winning stage plays, Martin McDonagh's feature film directorial debut, In Bruges, is a gloriously offbeat jaunt through modern day Belgium in the company of two hopelessly mismatched hit men. The majestic belfry towers and rosary stalls of Bruges provide the unlikely backdrop for a blackly humorous tale of betrayal and redemption. McDonagh's ear for dialogue is acute as ever and he gifts Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson some wonderfully foul-mouthed exchanges in which their hapless assassins debate the pleasures of sightseeing versus continental beer, with unexpectedly moving consequences.

The Belgian tourist board will be delighted with glimpses of many of the city's most popular tourist attractions including the 15th-century Jerusalem Church, the Basilica of the Holy Blood and the Groeninge Museum with its rich collection of Flemish expressionist art.

However, the beautiful market square and surrounding side streets are spattered with enough blood to suggest the characters won't be welcome back any time soon. In the aftermath of a bungled hit that results in the senseless death of a little boy in church, gunmen for hire Ray (Farrell) and Ken (Gleeson) head for the continent to await instructions from their fiery-tempered crime boss, Harry (Ralph Fiennes).

Ken is delighted by the unexpected detour - "Bruges is the best-preserved medieval city in Belgium!" he gushes, eagerly compiling a full itinerary of historical hotspots.

However, Ray is unmoved by the cobbled streets and breathtaking gothic architecture.

Like a petulant teenager, he wastes no time in letting Ken know that he would rather wile away the hours drowning his sorrows and flirting with some of the locals.

That night, Ray plies his Oirish charm on beautiful drug dealer Chloe (Clemence Poesy) and Ken finally makes contact with Harry and is given his next assignment, one which he must keep secret from his partner in crime.

Racked with guilt, Ken seeks a way out of his predicament while ray also befriends a dwarf American actor called Jimmy (Jordan Prentice), who is shooting a film in the city, and will play a pivotal role in the hit men's fate.

In Bruges relies on the quickfire verbal jousting between Gleeson and Farrell and both actors are in fine form, contrasting Ken's paternal calm with Ray's manic and profanely funny antics, which involve punching an American woman in a crowded restaurant.

Rapport between the leads is interrupted by a slightly undernourished romantic subplot, and the arrival of Fiennes' Mr Big, complete with a Cockney accent that sounds like a poor imitation of Ben Kingsley's hard man in Sexy Beast.

Tensions between the crime boss and his underlings escalate into a full-blown running battle.

"Why don't you put your guns down and go home?" demands a hotelier meekly.

"Don't be stupid," sneers Harry, "this is the shoot-out." That told her.