Before he became Jason Statham’s go-to director for incredibly intense action pictures, David Ayer was the king of the LA crime movie genre. His screenplay for Training Day as well as early directing efforts with Dark Blue and Harsh Times examined the moral complexity of LAPD detectives toeing the line between enforcing the law and abusing it. With 2008’s Street Kings, Ayer showed that even the darkest cops can find redemption within a cycle of violence.
