'To Live and Die' Again
William Friedkin's 1985 action flick remains his finest
By Andy Klein
William Friedkin has had one of the most fascinatingly spotty careers of any major American director. In 1967, I accidentally stumbled upon his first feature, the truly dreadful Sonny & Cher vehicle Good Times. Only a few films later, he became famous with The French Connection (1971), definitely a step upward; like most of his best films, it's both inspired and nasty - cold as ice. Perhaps because I didn't catch The Exorcist in its first release, it has never left much impression on me, except that the ugliness at its core makes The French Connection look sentimental in comparison.
But his 1985 thriller, To Live and Die in L.A. - not merely very cold but also severely flawed - remains the Friedkin opus I still find myself watching year after year. Part of its appeal is its sheer technical snap. It seemed pretty clear at the time that the director had flipped out over Michael Mann's then-current Miami Vice. He absorbed its music-video-inflected technique and elevated it into a blueprint for the action movie of the future; some of this aesthetic eventually became common in Hollywood indirectly, largely through the influence of John Woo.
Adapted from Gerald Petievich's novel, To Live and Die in L.A. concerns a ruthless T-man (William L. Petersen) out to get the counterfeiter who killed his partner. The first half of the picture is almost abstract, with minimal dialogue; everything is conveyed in sharp disjointed images, with taut music (mostly by Wang Chung) on the soundtrack. Things become more conventional in the second half, as the plot heats up; and Friedkin throws in a car chase that tops the one in French Connection. (Weirdly, almost no one notices that the freeway traffic in this chase is on the left side of the road. For years I thought the image had needed to be flopped because of some problem with screen direction - which Friedkin has testily denied. And on the making-of documentary on the DVD, actor John Pankow makes it clear that it was done deliberately to subliminally keep people off balance.)
But it is Friedkin's moral attitude that makes the film interesting: He manages to keep us involved with his corrupt hero without flatly endorsing him. The casting helps: Willem Dafoe was typecast as an obvious villain in those days - he broke out of that mold with Platoon a year later - but Petersen looks like a kid, not a cop, baby-faced without being particularly appealing. As bonuses, there is a great early performance from John Turturro, appearing to channel Timothy Carey; solid work from Dean Stockwell (right before his comeback in Blue Velvet) and the late Steve James; and even a rare acting appearance by Robert Downey Sr.
The movie steadfastly avoids using familiar L.A. landmarks: Cinematographer Robby Müller beautifully evokes the lesser-known parts of the city, much as he had a few years earlier in Repo Man.
Given the film's status as a cult item rather than a blockbuster, it's gratifying that MGM/UA - which has often simply tossed its most interesting titles out there in plain-vanilla editions - has gone to such lengths to satisfy the film's small but rabid fan base. In addition to the usual trailers and semi-usual photo gallery, there is an intelligent full-length commentary by Friedkin. It appears to have been edited from an interview; it frequently doesn't relate to the immediate business on the screen.
The ending of the film has always been its weakest element. During the last 10 minutes, things go to hell in a handbasket, with a lame variation on the Manos: Hands of Fate ploy of a subsidiary character mysteriously and improbably adopting the personality of a now-deceased major character. The DVD provides an alternative ending, which is way worse. This seems to be one of those cases where the filmmakers painted themselves into a corner from which there was no graceful egress.Published: 12/11/2003
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