:
John Meier,
Loren Janes,
Patrick Romano,
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William Friedkin,
William Friedkin
see all cast/crew...
: 
: MGM
: Action, Suspense/Thriller, Film Noir, Neo Noir, Adventure, Crime, Cops, Neo Noir, Espionage, Cold War
: 116 min.
: English, Spanish, French
: English, Spanish, French
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William Friedkin's crime thriller, based on a book by U.S. Secret Service agent Gerald Petievich, concerns an arrogant Secret Service official who wants to get his man at any price. Willem Dafoe plays Eric Masters, an ultra-smooth counterfeiter who has managed to sidestep the police for years. He is so up-front about his dealings, in fact, that when some undercover agents try to make a deal with him at his health club, Eric tells them, "I've been coming to this gym three times a week for five years. I'm an easy guy to find. People know they can trust me." But when young and eager Secret Service agent Richard Chance (William L. Petersen) finds out that his partner has been cold-bloodedly murdered by Eric, he trains his relentlessness upon capturing Eric -- whether it means robbery, murder, or exploiting his friends and associates. As Chance erases the dividing line between good and evil, he drags his new partner John Vukovich (John Pankow) and Ruth Lanier (Darlanne Fluegel), an ex-con, down into the maelstrom with him. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
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| Flop-sweat ferocity
by tboot
November 22, 2003 - 11:25 AM PST
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9 out of 9 members found this review helpful
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| The first words spoken in To Live And Die In LA come from Ronald Reagan. Heard in the film's opening moments in an off-camera public speech, he casts his dark shadow across the rest of the film and, along with the club-beat music score by Wang Chung, indelibly locates us deep in the 1980s. Friedkin was virtually washed up by the time To Live And Die In LA was released in 1985, and the film has a flop-sweat ferocity that makes it easy to imagine that Friedkin invested his own bridge-burning desperation in it, taking primordial cop-film cliches and squeezing every last drop of blood from them. Richard Chance, played by newcomer William Peterson in a performance so superbly pitiless he can't have hoped to ever work again (indeed, it took years for him to find his niche as a TV cop on CSI, is a Secret Service agent on the trail of effete counterfeitor and super-criminal Eric Masters (an even more decadent than usual Willem Dafoe), who killed his partner and best friend Jimmy Hart. Hart was a righteous cop who kept hot-dogger Chance morally anchored and, without him, Chance quickly turns into a terrifying, feral animal, willing to annihilate himself and everyone he encounters to bag Masters. With an eerie, luscious look (LA's ragged edges never looked so good as they do through Robbie Muller's camera here) shattering violence, and hard-boiled dialogue so overripe it'll leave your floor sticky (When an informant, who also happens to be his girlfriend, wants a bigger payment, he tells her "You want bread, fuck a baker."), it's an unforgettable echo of the go-for-broke, dirty-money '80s, and the ultimate William Friedkin film. |
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GreenCine Member Rating
(Average 6.61)
84 Votes
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