*Academy Award winner Forest Whitaker is donning a captain’s uniform and questionable ethics in the new cop thriller “Street Kings” which is directed by David Ayer.

      The actor portrays LAPD Captain Jack Wander – a no-nonsense and dedicated officer who keeps a watchful eye on detective Tom Ludlow (played by Keanu Reeves) as he goes on a dangerous quest to track down his former partner’s killers.

      “It’s steeped in the police culture,” Whitaker said of the story, when questioned about any similarities to the Rampart Division scandal in his native Los Angeles. “They talked to people that are advisors and un-official advisors, some of whom were involved with the [Rampart investigation]. Mostly it just came from David’s mind. I know for myself, I didn’t create a character based out of Rampart.”

      “Police forces all over the world have issues of corruption,” he continued, “particularly because police officers aren’t paid a lot of money. It is a problem, but I think it’s been changing. I don’t want to act like the LAPD isn’t doing anything right because that’s not true.”

      The film moves in and out of good-cop/bad-cop with audiences wondering who’s really on the right side of the law. Cast members Cedric the Entertainer and Common told reporters that their characters walk the line of good and bad – each commenting that all the film's characters are both, while Whitaker said he hadn’t really realized the ambiguity of his role.

      “I think he cares about family. The guys are his family; that’s his world and he’s trying to protect them. He thinks that he’s fighting against corruption. In the end, he’s trying to make sure everybody is taken care of in his world. But I guess he’s a bad guy,” he considered, “but I didn’t really think of him that way. [This character] really trusted Keanu’s character. Trust was a big deal for him. He had a real strong code of ethics. But in the end, his code of ethics didn’t morally coincide with the way society sees things.”

      “Street Kings” is rife with questionable decisions and questionable cops, which make the film suspenseful, but the truths in the story beg the question, is it acceptable for law enforcement to do anything – even outside the law – to get the bad guy? Whitaker says no.

      “I think people make mistakes. Judgments are made that aren’t correct. People are put on death row and executed that weren’t guilty,” he began. “For me, playing cops is interesting and I’ve played a lot of them. As a kid growing up, I didn’t really have a positive attitude towards police. The police that I knew killed people I knew. So I don’t feel that way. It’s totally counterintuitive to the way I view what they’re doing.”

      But Whitaker says he would still call upon the police without hesitation.

      “Certainly when you get in danger, you call upon them; when you’re worrying about your life, ‘cause that’s what you have to do,” he said. “But I played this character to Keanu’s character coming into an awakening; wondering how to defeat the darkness; what’s right and what’s wrong. That grey area is what was interesting to me. I wasn’t trying to make a statement that I thought [police] should be able to do anything.”

      Whitaker is currently working on a television project that also questions right and wrong in regard to bearing arms.

     “I’m dealing with a project about a gun dealer; an international dealer. It’s an even bigger issue because we’re talking about this escalating into wars and funding countries with weapons and supplying them inside this country. And that project probably will be walking the line, too. Not the line of whether it’s right to arm people, but they question of if one group is being subjugated by another group, do they have the right to protect themselves? And if they have the right, should they be allowed to be armed? And whose decision is it to decide who gets to protect themselves,” he questioned.

      Reflecting on the violence and oppression in Darfur, Uganda, China, and Serbia conflicts, Whitaker explained that the next issue would be one of financial control.

      “It becomes economic as far as how you disrupt balance in the world,” he said. “Guns disrupt balance; and how you create wars in certain places to create unbalance, like in Nigeria, or different places for oil. These issues are so complex and we’re going to try to explore some of them in this TV show.”

      Back to the issue at hand. Whitaker’s portrayal of Wander is relatively calculated. The actor revealed that he kept to himself on the set in order to get into and stay true to his character.

     “I was trying to stay in the right zone,” he said. “The character wasn’t easy to play. He has a lot of power. You think they’re big and heavy and feel like stone, like they can just walk through you, and I’m not like that, so I had to keep in that zone.”

     “Street Kings”, also starring Hugh Laurie, Chris Evans, and The Game, opens in theaters nationwide today. For more, check out www.foxsearchlight.com/streetkings.