Post by ronnierocketago on Jan 15, 2006 18:18:07 GMT
RRA's Video Bin Review: TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A. (1985)
(Originally posted January 13, 2005)
In more than a decade, William Friedkin went from scoring two critical/financial box-office smash hits with the masterpieces THE FRENCH CONNECTION and THE EXORCIST to being off the radar in Hollywood. From Oscar-glory(he did win Best Director for CONNECTION) to obscurity. This turn-around was caused by his SORCERER, which was a big dud in the same summer of STAR WARS, followed by duds like the Al Pacino vehicle CRUISING.
By 1985, Friedkin was able to get greenlighted over at MGM a low-budget cop action/drama based on a little-known crime novel written by former U.S. Secret Service agent Gerald Petievich. Teaming up with the author to write the film's screenplay, Friedkin helmed a mini-respectable comeback in Hollywood of which still resonates to his current situation in Hollywood.
In Los Angeles, a U.S. Secret Service agent Richard Chance (William L. Petersen) loses his partner and friend Jim Hart (Michael Greene) in an investigation of counterfeit, two days before the retirement of Jim. The agent John Vukovich (John Pankow) is assigned to work with Chance, who is obsessed to capture Eric 'Rick' Masters (Willem Dafoe), the criminal responsible for the death of Jim. Chance risks his partner and his own career, trying to arrest Rick.
Yes, the movie's plot makes it sound quite simple and generic. Then again, its *how* one delivers such a picture that ultimately matters.
The film has such traditional and expected elements, from a "maverick over-the-edge" cop( ) to the by-the-numbers cop partner, to the boys using a former burgler associate(a very young John Turturro) of the baddie to get close, etc.
Its interesting how this same basic template was seen again two years later in the massive hit picture LETHAL WEAPON, yet to compare this with Friedkin's TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A. means different thoughts on the cop story of two different decades. WEAPON was a popcorn-popping action piece where the crazy cop's problems are resolved, and everyone has a laugh, or basically the big-boom of the 1980s. However, Friedkin helms a picture that would have fit fine in the cinemas of the 1970s with a hero that wasn't clearly "good" nor was the story fluffy enough for mass audiences to consume.
Fact is, William Petersen(in his youthful movie star days, or two decades before dominating TV with C.S.I.) appears in the beginning as a renegade cop that promises to do "anything" necessary to take down Willhem Dafoe(yet another actor given a early major break in his career)...and as we see in this picture, he WILL do anything. From having a regular exchange of sex and information from a parolee woman(in which she in return doesn't get sent back to prison and all the booty bandits) that is strictly business only ("You want bread, fuck a baker.")
He is quite a bastard. This isn't the maverick cop that "has" to break the legal rules inorder to apprehend his suspect that we are accustomed to with Hollywood movies. No, he is just it seems in nature a corrupt cop that now has a moral vendetta, and whatever layers of honest law enforcement left in him is flushed down the toilet. By the time of his grand exit from the movie, its a surprise...but we don't cry or feel bad for the character. Ultimately, the story ends when a person that once was what a police officer should be, ends up becoming totally opposite in the end. Like the pieces of paper that Rick Masters has counterfeited into really-good fake American dollars, many characters in the film uphold their artificial "public" disguises but ultimately are as shallow as the people themselves. Was this the point of Friedkin?
I laughed when I read Leonard Maltin's super-negative review of the movie, where he trashes mainly because: "There is no one to root for." While that lame critic relishes in simplistic morality tales, I think the rest of us understand that sometimes the protagonist in a story isn't a clear-cut hero. Sometimes, hes the "good guy" only because his antagonist is MUCH worse.
A legendary sequence in the movie is when he and his partner attempt to hijack a supposed jewelry dealer from San Francisco and steal his cash, yet then they realize that they fouled up big time, they embark on quite a stunning car chase that which the Michael Bays and the $125 million budgets of the world fail to come close in capturing the pure motor-power or adrenaline of it, nor the actual creativity. Really, someone DRIVING in opposite of the traffic of a highway? Insanity...but great stuff.
Interestingly, TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A. did garner respectable positive reviews from critics upon its release in 1985, and for a $6 million picture that wasn't exactly the highest priority studio project for MGM, it did gross $15 million...without any major film stars(of the time). However, it did give Friedkin some legitimacy once again in Hollywood, which gave for some decent (and quite terrible) pictures that ranged from the mis-understood humane monster thriller THE HUNTED to the basic melodramatic RULES OF ENGAGEMENT to the major flop JADE, yet hes still working in Hollywood.
Meanwhile, the movie has continued the secret level of high respect from major film fans and crime/cop flick buffs.
Certainly not a masterpiece, but one that is unique against the curb and one that with the high degree of accuracy about the world of counterfeiting and the Secret Service from Friedkin, its almost the greatest Michael Mann movie that Michael Mann NEVER directed. Funny enough, Mann did sue Friedkin for "plagarism" after he believed that TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A. ripped off his TV series MIAMI VICE. While he lost the lawsuit....its certainly an interesting idea, except without the whole pastel MTV Music Video garbage stuff.
What is awesome is that with the internet and the film's rather slick Special Edition DVD(get Friedkin's commentary and many cool Docs for only $10!), the film's prestige has risen and in fact many consider it to be Friedkin's last "good" movie. I wouldn't go that far, but it does Kick Ass.
Final Film Rating - ***1/2
(Originally posted January 13, 2005)
In more than a decade, William Friedkin went from scoring two critical/financial box-office smash hits with the masterpieces THE FRENCH CONNECTION and THE EXORCIST to being off the radar in Hollywood. From Oscar-glory(he did win Best Director for CONNECTION) to obscurity. This turn-around was caused by his SORCERER, which was a big dud in the same summer of STAR WARS, followed by duds like the Al Pacino vehicle CRUISING.
By 1985, Friedkin was able to get greenlighted over at MGM a low-budget cop action/drama based on a little-known crime novel written by former U.S. Secret Service agent Gerald Petievich. Teaming up with the author to write the film's screenplay, Friedkin helmed a mini-respectable comeback in Hollywood of which still resonates to his current situation in Hollywood.
In Los Angeles, a U.S. Secret Service agent Richard Chance (William L. Petersen) loses his partner and friend Jim Hart (Michael Greene) in an investigation of counterfeit, two days before the retirement of Jim. The agent John Vukovich (John Pankow) is assigned to work with Chance, who is obsessed to capture Eric 'Rick' Masters (Willem Dafoe), the criminal responsible for the death of Jim. Chance risks his partner and his own career, trying to arrest Rick.
Yes, the movie's plot makes it sound quite simple and generic. Then again, its *how* one delivers such a picture that ultimately matters.
The film has such traditional and expected elements, from a "maverick over-the-edge" cop( ) to the by-the-numbers cop partner, to the boys using a former burgler associate(a very young John Turturro) of the baddie to get close, etc.
Its interesting how this same basic template was seen again two years later in the massive hit picture LETHAL WEAPON, yet to compare this with Friedkin's TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A. means different thoughts on the cop story of two different decades. WEAPON was a popcorn-popping action piece where the crazy cop's problems are resolved, and everyone has a laugh, or basically the big-boom of the 1980s. However, Friedkin helms a picture that would have fit fine in the cinemas of the 1970s with a hero that wasn't clearly "good" nor was the story fluffy enough for mass audiences to consume.
Fact is, William Petersen(in his youthful movie star days, or two decades before dominating TV with C.S.I.) appears in the beginning as a renegade cop that promises to do "anything" necessary to take down Willhem Dafoe(yet another actor given a early major break in his career)...and as we see in this picture, he WILL do anything. From having a regular exchange of sex and information from a parolee woman(in which she in return doesn't get sent back to prison and all the booty bandits) that is strictly business only ("You want bread, fuck a baker.")
He is quite a bastard. This isn't the maverick cop that "has" to break the legal rules inorder to apprehend his suspect that we are accustomed to with Hollywood movies. No, he is just it seems in nature a corrupt cop that now has a moral vendetta, and whatever layers of honest law enforcement left in him is flushed down the toilet. By the time of his grand exit from the movie, its a surprise...but we don't cry or feel bad for the character. Ultimately, the story ends when a person that once was what a police officer should be, ends up becoming totally opposite in the end. Like the pieces of paper that Rick Masters has counterfeited into really-good fake American dollars, many characters in the film uphold their artificial "public" disguises but ultimately are as shallow as the people themselves. Was this the point of Friedkin?
I laughed when I read Leonard Maltin's super-negative review of the movie, where he trashes mainly because: "There is no one to root for." While that lame critic relishes in simplistic morality tales, I think the rest of us understand that sometimes the protagonist in a story isn't a clear-cut hero. Sometimes, hes the "good guy" only because his antagonist is MUCH worse.
A legendary sequence in the movie is when he and his partner attempt to hijack a supposed jewelry dealer from San Francisco and steal his cash, yet then they realize that they fouled up big time, they embark on quite a stunning car chase that which the Michael Bays and the $125 million budgets of the world fail to come close in capturing the pure motor-power or adrenaline of it, nor the actual creativity. Really, someone DRIVING in opposite of the traffic of a highway? Insanity...but great stuff.
Interestingly, TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A. did garner respectable positive reviews from critics upon its release in 1985, and for a $6 million picture that wasn't exactly the highest priority studio project for MGM, it did gross $15 million...without any major film stars(of the time). However, it did give Friedkin some legitimacy once again in Hollywood, which gave for some decent (and quite terrible) pictures that ranged from the mis-understood humane monster thriller THE HUNTED to the basic melodramatic RULES OF ENGAGEMENT to the major flop JADE, yet hes still working in Hollywood.
Meanwhile, the movie has continued the secret level of high respect from major film fans and crime/cop flick buffs.
Certainly not a masterpiece, but one that is unique against the curb and one that with the high degree of accuracy about the world of counterfeiting and the Secret Service from Friedkin, its almost the greatest Michael Mann movie that Michael Mann NEVER directed. Funny enough, Mann did sue Friedkin for "plagarism" after he believed that TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A. ripped off his TV series MIAMI VICE. While he lost the lawsuit....its certainly an interesting idea, except without the whole pastel MTV Music Video garbage stuff.
What is awesome is that with the internet and the film's rather slick Special Edition DVD(get Friedkin's commentary and many cool Docs for only $10!), the film's prestige has risen and in fact many consider it to be Friedkin's last "good" movie. I wouldn't go that far, but it does Kick Ass.
Final Film Rating - ***1/2