[H]is wiry, intense presence in David Ayer's Street Kings gives surprising credibility to this fantasy of police corruption. ... [I]t is something of a surprise to see the sinewy 81-year-old, who ran the Los Angeles Police Department from 1978 to 1992, playing L.A.'s police chief delivering a eulogy at a police funeral. At least the dead cop Gates praises happens to be the only honorable guy on the beat....

"The man's an icon, a living legend, especially among cops. He's a rock star, " says Ayer. "On the set, people would be shoving Keanu out of the way to get a picture of him." When Gates showed up for his scene, he asked Ayer if he could rejigger the lines and "take standard phraseology and turn it into LAPDese," says Ayer. "I was like, 'Yes, sir. Thanks.' "

We can vouch for those revisions, too — like the time Gates said more black suspects died from LAPD choke holds because "the veins or the arteries do not open as fast as they do on normal people"? Vintage LAPDese! Alas, the "wiry gravitas" likely honed over months of practice in front of cameras while talking down the King beating and subsequent riots and years of deflecting charges of racism in the police force was not a fresh enough breath of air to save Street Kings at the box office. We're hopeful, however, that the viewing public will come around to embrace Gates's patois in time for the surge of plum avenging cop roles to follow.

• Daryl Gates walks the Hollywood beat [LAT]

WHAT'S NEW: Slim pickings, to be sure. The latest entry in the stultifying End-of-Ideas canon, the PG-13 slasher remake Prom Night is set to take the sluggish weekend with what most observers are predicting as a $14 million weekend in wide release. The only other release set to crack the top five is the Keanu Reeves cop-bomb Street Kings, which is tanking at Rotten Tomatoes as we speak and should top out between $10-$11 million. Also opening: the Ellen Page/Thomas Haden Church/Dennis Quaid comedy Smart People; the octogenarian-punk-choir doc Young@Heart; and an English-language version of France's Oscar-nominated animated film Persepolis, with voice contributions from Catherine Deneuve and Sean Penn.

THE BIG LOSER: Surprise hit 21 will no doubt slow down in its third week, but few recent releases will hit a wall as violently as George Clooney's Leatherheads. Poor word-of-mouth from reviews and a third-place finish on opening weekend will yield a poisonous turnout of no more than $6 million, mostly from Renee Zellweger obsessives eager for a second look after enjoying her hijinks at the London premiere.

THE UNDERDOG: After recent, high-profile berths at the Toronto and Sundance Film Festivals, the tiny ensemble drama The Visitor finally arrives in theaters. Directed by Tom McCarthy (The Station Agent), the film features Six Feet Under veteran Richard Jenkins as an emotionally withdrawn college professor who finds a Middle Eastern stranger crashing in his New York apartment. The "visitor," an illegal immigrant, teaches our mild-mannered hero the meaning of life through hand-drum lessons until he's arrested and deported. Thankfully the professor is a decent enough human and drummer by that point that he manages to score with the man's visiting mother. But, you know, in a good way. Just trust us, we liked it.

FOR SHUT-INS: New DVD's include There Will Be Blood, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, Lions For Lambs, Sweeney Todd and, in a long-awaited coup that's kept us tethered to our living rooms since Tuesday, the first season of Matlock.

Are you excited yet? Aside from wagering with us on Leatherheads' box-office plunge, what are your own plans for a slow-ish movie weekend?

We have our own theories about why Ellroy adaptations have yet to explode the author's cult, but we defer this morning to noted industry observer Scarlett Johansson, who seems to suggest that kids these days just don't get it:

Johansson, who played '40s vamp Kay Lake in Black Dahlia, talked about how difficult his words were to put across. "As a modern actor, we made this movement that started in the 1970s. ... Realism and the gritty kind of natural technique. It was interesting to pair that with the dialogue so stylized and impossibly unrealistic, saying things like, 'How could you, Dwight, how could you?' We never say those things. That kind of dialogue is so dated."

"Interesting" naturally meaning "impossible," if you've seen Brian De Palma's atrocious Dahlia adaptation. In any case, it doesn't pay for Ellroy to comment on the curse that's afflicted the majority of his films; during an interview prior to Dahlia's release in 2006, he told me, "Money is the gift no one ever returns," and God knows his aggression won't extend to elliptical, snappy second-guessing of Reeves' leading role in Kings. We know it's business, but why must Ellroy — and his adaptees — always leave us wanting more? And not in a good way?

• Hollywood's James Ellroy enigma [LAT]