There's no real cutoff point to youth. Every year, you keep convincing yourself that you're still young and groovy until you find yourself berating younger people on Facebook because their culture is vapid and shitty. I don't want to be that guy, there is still great art being created today. Nothing that will be created from now to the end of time will ever be even remotely similar to William Friedkin's 1985 movie TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A though. No way. Not because the 1980 are a sacred period sealed away in history, but because it is a glorious accident in filmmaking that features over the top violence, ghetto martial arts experts, constant groin kicking, constant and unprovoked male nudity and the nightmare logic of cocaine addicts.
Some things are simply too awesome to happen more than once.
I had been clued on TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A, but I knew next to nothing about it. To be honest, it took me a little while to get into Officer Richard Chance (William Petersen) and his crusade to avenge the death of his partner Jimmy Hart (Michael Greene) who got shot in the face a silly amount of times for scratching an itch about an ongoing case just two days before his retirement. This movie has a thing for shotgun blowing loads of pellets in people's faces, by the way. William Friedkin has his way of challenging his viewers though, with extreme yet oddly plausible plotting and following the fall of Richard Chance into obsession and unlawfulness becomes increasingly more engaging until a gloriously sick final scene only a deviant bastard like Friedkin could've come up with.
The greatest thing about TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A is that it's a movie you can enjoy both ironically and earnestly. It's a legit hardboiled thriller about vengeance and professional obsession. It's one of these movies about vengeance that works because it gradually strips the protagonist of his righteousness. Not even his heart remains pure and one inexplicably awesome scene (involving standing sex) will make you wonder if it even was. The only thing separating protagonist Richard Chance and antagonist Eric Masters (awesomely played by a young and strapping Willem Dafoe) is their respective professional obsession.
Masters is a ruthless self-made man, but the bodies pile up because Chance disturbs the balance of his circle of power. Masters is a high profile artist moonlighting as a money counterfeiter, so if Chance would let go of his personal vendetta based on an investigation on a freakin' economic crime, the only people who would have to deal with Masters are the people who willingly want to do business with him and therefore wouldn't get an ending they didn't merit. The moral ambiguity of TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A creeps up on you, but it goes way further into its argument than most movies.
Masters is a ruthless self-made man, but the bodies pile up because Chance disturbs the balance of his circle of power. Masters is a high profile artist moonlighting as a money counterfeiter, so if Chance would let go of his personal vendetta based on an investigation on a freakin' economic crime, the only people who would have to deal with Masters are the people who willingly want to do business with him and therefore wouldn't get an ending they didn't merit. The moral ambiguity of TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A creeps up on you, but it goes way further into its argument than most movies.
One of these gentlemen is about to lose his apparel and die without his dignity. I'll let you guess which one.
TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A has a frosted side though, like Mini-Weaths cereals. The violence in this movie is so unhinged and over the top, it's often hilarious. For example, there's a running gag in TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A about characters kicking each other in the balls. The timing is way too deliberate not be consciously comedic. I mean, in what other seemingly humorless thriller have you ever seen a revenge kick in the balls, right? There are also inexplicably awesome moments like a random jailbird extra character landing a Kung Fu spin kick on Willem Dafoe's sidekick character's face. William Friedkin's creativity and his inability to control the levels of violence in his movies always made him special, but TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A might be his greatest achievement in violent excess.
William Friedkin is one of my favorite directors, because he is absolutely fearless and maybe a little insane. TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A has aged into an urban legend because of limited distribution and lack of transcendent 1980s leads (the two lead actors arguably reached their peak of popularity in the last decade), but it's now at the crossroads. We need to get TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A back into the cultural discourse as one of the best things the 1980s had to offer. Or maybe we don't because some dirtbag studio executive would turn it into a lame remake starring Chad Michael Murray. TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A is one of these perfect things, like POINT BREAK or RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II. They are just perfect the way they are are and we need to appreciate them without re-opening them to add our dose of irony and self-consciousness.
There will never be another TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A and somehow this is fine. Some movies deserve uniqueness.
BADASS
William Friedkin is one of my favorite directors, because he is absolutely fearless and maybe a little insane. TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A has aged into an urban legend because of limited distribution and lack of transcendent 1980s leads (the two lead actors arguably reached their peak of popularity in the last decade), but it's now at the crossroads. We need to get TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A back into the cultural discourse as one of the best things the 1980s had to offer. Or maybe we don't because some dirtbag studio executive would turn it into a lame remake starring Chad Michael Murray. TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A is one of these perfect things, like POINT BREAK or RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II. They are just perfect the way they are are and we need to appreciate them without re-opening them to add our dose of irony and self-consciousness.
There will never be another TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A and somehow this is fine. Some movies deserve uniqueness.
BADASS
