To Live And Die In L A

You can see what William Friedkin was trying to do here and his ambition is commendable. Unfortunately, he fails on just about every count from the embarrassing beginning involving an exploding terrorist to an ending ludicrously cribbed from his own Cruising (1980). Based on a novel by former Secret Service agent Gerald Petievich who also co-wrote the screen adaptation with Friedkin, the idea was to produce a tough, in-your-face noir-ish thriller. What resulted is near-risible nonsense steeped in 80s kitsch MTV machismo.

Undercover cop William Petersen (his character is named Richard Chance, which tells you the quality you're not dealing with here) who struts around in tight jeans and a leather jacket like a bantam rooster on amphetamines as he pursues Willem Dafoe's coolly villainous counterfeiter (called Eric Masters, here we go again). Dafoe built a career on this sort of character, so it's a walk in the park for him but Petersen looks like he's walked off the set of Miami Vice and as for his partner, played by John Pankow, the less said the better.

The script is horrible, with gruesomely cliché'd dialogue and plot holes so large that either they lost a chunk of the script or the footage that matched them (virtually everything involving John Turturro is a scandal, from the failed hit to him simply evaporating from the story). The ending is an inexplicable mess, and overall the film, designed mainly to appeal to the popcorn brigade, is an insult to the intelligence. On the upside Darlanne Fluegel makes for a provocative tramp whilst Friedkin makes a credible (but characteristically unsuccessful) attempt to top the car chase from, once again, his own iconic 70s film, The French Connection.

Combine all this with the synth-pop soundtrack by Wang Chung and the awful 80s sound design, make-up and art direction, and Friedkin pretty much has all bases covered for a major disappointment.

 

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