By
Todd Garbarini
William
Friedkin’s To Live and Die in L.A.,
which opened on Friday, November 1, 1985 to lukewarm notices and underwhelming
box office despite being championed by Roger Ebert’s four-star review, is a
highly stylized, dark, and uncompromising crime thriller that boasts a
then-unknown cast with a story and a pace that feels more suited to the
1970’s. It also contains what I consider
to be the greatest car chase ever filmed and edited for a major motion picture,
which took no less than five weeks to plan and shoot. Having seen Mr. Friedkin’s brilliant East
Coast police thriller The French
Connection (1971) on VHS in 1986, I made it a point the following year to
catch up with his West Coast-based story of a Secret Service agent, Richard
Chance (William Petersen), whose best friend and partner Jim Hart (Michael
Greene) has been murdered by artist/currency counterfeiter Rick Masters (Willem
Dafoe). Chance has one goal: put Masters away for life with no regard for how
he has to do it. Truthfully, he would
prefer to kill him. This causes problems
for his new partner John Vukovich (John Pankow) who comes from a family of law
enforcement officers and wants to do things by the book. Vukovich’s patience and unwillingness to go
outside the boundaries of acceptability is tested when: Chance surreptitiously removes
crucial evidence from a crime scene in order to get to Masters; springs a
prisoner friend (John Turturro) of Masters without Vukovich’s knowledge to get
him to testify; and most notably forces Vukovich to go along with a plan to
obtain cash needed to get closer to Masters while nearly dying in what is
arguably the cinema’s most exciting getaway car chase sequence. What makes the chase work so well is that
it’s physical, it’s possible (though highly improbable), and it’s not done in a
Fast and the Furious, over-the-top
sort of way. It also comes as a result
of a plot point and isn’t just there for the sake of having a chase scene. Chance also beds a willing parolee (Darlanne
Fluegel) who gives him information on current convicts in order to provide for
herself and her son Christopher.
Despite
the intricate plot and the phenomenal car chase, I initially didn’t like the
film. The mixture of Eighties-style pop
music by Wang Chung (which turned me off, but I now feel fits the movie like a
glove) and disreputable characters were off-putting, but subsequent viewings gave
me a change of heart and I now feel that this is the last truly great film
directed by Mr. Friedkin. Like the
inexorable Popeye Doyle in The French
Connection (he will stop at nothing to put drug dealers and users away),
Chance will stop at nothing to stop and punish Masters. The difference between the two films is that
the former paints Brooklyn and New York City as gritty and almost despairing
cities whereas the latter bathes the frame in a Los Angeles that we have not
seen before. While also gritty, grimy
and dark, this is a Los Angeles that is also highly glossy and beautiful, with
beautiful people who are about as real as the counterfeit bills that Masters
manufactures. This is the overall theme of
To Live and Die in L.A. which is to
say that it’s about fraudulence. People
use each other for their own personal gains. Masters is an artist but hates what he paints and burns his work in
frustration. Since he cannot find joy or
satisfaction in his own originality, he resorts to copying others, in this case
$20, $50, and $100 bills in a procedure that is painstaking and difficult.
Like
The French Connection, To Live and Die in LA is also based on a
novel of the same name, this one written by former Secret Service Agent Gerald
Petievich. What makes the film almost
remarkable is the opening sequence which features a martyr who shouts “Allahu
Akbar†while blowing himself up on the roof a hotel where President Reagan is
giving a speech. This scene made little
sense to me 29 years ago, but is eerily prescient of the world that we
unfortunately live in today.
The
performances are excellent all around. William Petersen, whose film debut was as a bar bouncer in Michael
Mann’s Thief (1981), is terrific as
Rick Chance and plays him as a daredevil whose cowboy nature makes him a
dangerous person to be around. This is
established in an early sequence wherein Chance bungee jumps off of the Vincent
Thomas Bridge in San Pedro, CA. In
addition to the martyr sequence, this could also be one of the earliest
instances of this now highly popular activity showing up in a major motion
picture. John Pankow is also quite good
as Chance’s conflicted partner. The
stand-out is Willem Dafoe as Masters, whose icy expressions and demeanor can
change on a moment’s notice without warning. Darlanne Fluegel is mysterious as Chance’s muse; I first saw her in Battle Beyond the Stars (1980). Debra Feuer is striking as Masters’
girlfriend and confidante. Dean Stockwell
is great as Masters’ lawyer. You can
almost see him prepping himself for the role of Ben in David Lynch’s masterful Blue Velvet the following year. Steve James is an actor I always liked ever
since I first saw him in the “Night Vigil†episode of T.J. Hooker in 1984. He
started in the industry as a stunt man in films such as The Wiz, The Wanderers, The Warriors, Dressed to Kill, and He Knows
You’re Alone prior to onscreen acting. Here he plays Jeff, one of Masters’ clients and his performance, though
small, shines. He also appeared in the
William Friedkin TV-movie C.A.T. Squad
in 1986, which was also written by Mr. Petievich. His premature death in 1993 from what is
rumored to be the medical treatment that he received after a cancer diagnosis is
a tremendous loss to the entertainment industry.