To Live and Die in L.A. poster & wallpaper

William L. Petersen, Willem Dafoe, John Pankow

A Secret Service agent becomes obsessed with tracking down a notorious and dangerous Los Angeles counterfeitor.

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75% liked it

2,407 ratings

Critics

86% liked it

22 critics

R, 116 min.

Directed by: William Friedkin

Release Date: November 1, 1985

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DVD Release Date: December 2, 2003

Stats: 526 reviews

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Willem Dafoe as Eric 'Rick' Masters in To Live and Die in L.A. (1985) Willem Dafoe as Eric 'Rick' Masters in To Live and Die in L.A. (1985) To Live and Die in L.A.
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Flixster Reviews (526)

  • bradwest
    September 20, 2008
    bradwest
    Yeah, this kinda rips off the Miami Vice style; but still the story and acting are solid.
  • middleeasternfilms
    May 18, 2008
    middleeasternfilms
    Great, very 80's action-drama about two inept Secret Service agents on the trail of the murdering counterfeiter Defoe. Dated, but still a great film with Petersen's acting leading the way. Points added for the hero inexplicably dying before the end, but then again points dropped ...( read more)for having to see Petersen's junk. Thank God he's on Tv and we won't have to go through THAT again, eh?
  • allan913
    March 5, 2008
    allan913
    An stlyish, edgy and brilliant crime thriller. brutal, pulse pounding and exhilerating. It delivers a sensational car chase. William Peterson is memerising. Willem Dafoe is brilliant. Director, William Friedkin's best film since The French connection.
  • kenstachnik
    February 20, 2008
    kenstachnik
    Hollywood Saloon approved...

    One of the best cop movies of all time
  • FangsFirst
    November 2, 2007
    FangsFirst
    The most unfortunate thing about my viewing of this movie is the fact that some asshole ruined the ending by writing a one sentence review on a website I frequent that gave it away. Not even someone trying to be a jerk, it was just the ending was the thing he felt made the movie ...( read more)stand out. I think it hopefully shows in my reviews how hard I try to avoid giving away almost anything about a movie, trying instead to show the flaws and values of them outside of the facts of plot.

    So, I had that in mind, because I'm not one of those people who can erase such things, throughout the movie, from the moment I started it playing. Unfortunate, but, as implied, pretty much unavoidable now. The first thing we hear is an extremely 80s theme song for the movie--gated drums, throbbing, synth-carried melody and simplistic rhythm (bass-snare-bass-snare, etc). I'm thinking, "OK, I can work with this..." and then realize that, yes, it's a theme song (the lyrics include the title). I know that many would see this as hideously dated and would be just completely disgusted by it, but my affection for the 80s, including 80s pop, is well-known, so I was okay with that. It also can work well with action, as Michael Mann proved with his television program Miami Vice--which he claimed To Live and Die in LA director William Friedkin had in fact plagiarized for this film. I can see it, as I got that very impression myself, but it's definitely a little darker--even as characters wander around with suitcoats over t-shirts and the like to 80s pop songs. However, what I was not expecting to see were the words "Music composed and performed by" followed by...Wang Chung?! Well, Okay...I wasn't expecting that. It's okay with me, but, huh?

    Anyway, Richard Chance (William Petersen of CSI fame) is Richard Chance, a Secret Service agent who epitomizes the ideas of "hotshot," "daredevil," and "death wish" (and I don't mean Charlie Bronson-style, though I guess he has that too). His partner Jim Hart (Michael Green) is soon to retire but intent on taking down counterfeiter Rick Masters (the always great Willem DaFoe) and tracks him to his current printing warehouse with disastrous results, the intense desire to stop him now passing to the otherwise callous, self-centered, obsessive, tunnel-visioned Chance. He is assigned new partner John Vukovich (John Pankow), thanks to the early retirement Hart has taken on, and tells him that he is going to stop at nothing to take down Masters, including breaking policies and laws. He uses every resource he has, including informant Ruth Lanier (Darlanne Fluegel) who he sleeps with but cares nothing for. He jumps off bridges (on a rope, of course) for fun and really will stop at nothing.

    The action is solid (this is William Friedkin, director of The French Connection and Sorceror amongst other things) and the car chase is actually very, very good and tense (many car chases actually bore me). Direction and style are perfect throughout, interesting shots for pure style that play with colour and speed. Friedkin is obsessed with detail and somewhat famously hired real counterfeiters so that the scene where Masters is counterfeiting money is completely accurate. DaFoe is great here, looking like an absolute professional as he follows a fairly complex process. Apparently the production got in real trouble with the Treasury over it, too.

    Unfortunately that's most of the good. There's a ton of bad here, which is shocking with all of the positive reviews. The dialogue is horrendous. I have a strong tolerance for bad dialogue, but when it's consistently bad and consistently woodenly and awkwardly performed, that tolerance is put to the test. It nearly snapped here. "Let me tell you something, amigo. I'm gonna bag Masters, and I don't give a shit how I do it," Chance tells Vukovich almost without provocation. Just reels it out there. "Rick, he's looking for something!" Bianca Torres (Debra Feuer) yells to Willem DaFoe's character as he stumbles groggy from a whack to the head, the character she refers to being in frame, scrambling through a bookshelf. Who the hell wrote this crap? It all sounds like an eight-year-old's idea of "badass" and comes off like an eight-year-old trying to sound badass. It's all very clunky and overly simplistic--but not in the short, terse sense, in the sense of a character saying "I am shooting someone!" as he shoots someone. It's superfluous. Maybe the characters would say that to each other, maybe, but it feels like they're trying to tell the audience what's going on and comes off as completely insane. Petersen is, well, from the first time I ever saw him, I thought, "Hey it's Richard Dreyf--oh wait, no, no it isn't." And from then on I saw him and would be thinking of Dreyfuss in my head, and Petersen is not up to snuff. Sorry, he is permanently "the poor man's Richard Dreyfuss" for me. He's decent enough and does end up a good antihero, looking just as cold, yet hot-headed as he should, but was still fairly wooden. He had the physicality and the tones and the rhythms, but the words would fall out of his mouth like chunks of lead, just dropping to the floor with a loud "thunk!" and no meaning or emotion in them. It drives me crazy when there's one element of a film that's so hideously out of whack from the quality of everything else present. If it's all amateurish, okay, if it's obviously a budgetary issue, okay. If it's well-directed and tense, but the dialogue makes me cringe, something is wrong. I can't get into this world correctly when there are parts that don't match.

    Apparently Gary Sinise was in the running to play Chance, which is a real shame. Somewhat amusingly, Friedkin apparently made this in lieu of Thomas Harris' Red Dragon, which he couldn't get the rights to. This was then filmed by Michael Mann (who had just sued him over this movie) as Manhunter--with William Petersen in the main role. Odd, indeed.

    I am shocked at how many people love this film. A second watch might make the hideous dialogue more digestible, but I don't know. The ending is pretty surprising (...or should be...) and a good choice on Friedkin's part. I really can't recommend this to anyone though, as they'd either find it dated or horribly written...or both. I'm only with the latter, but it was enough. Odd when it was so heavily researched and actually pretty well-plotted. Shame.

    Oh, and I wonder if I'm the only person who heard the name "Vukovich" and perked up instantly--thinking of Lance Henriksen in The Terminator a year earlier (also a law enforcement officer!).
  • zachdiehard
    October 8, 2009
    zachdiehard
    Most of the scenes in this movie work really well, but for me, they fail to make a cohesive whole. Still, it's well worth seeing, if only for the extreme 80'sness.
  • abzubabylon
    August 18, 2009
    abzubabylon
    Pretty good movie until the TWIST ending... Shotgun to the face.
  • samanthaseaotter
    July 24, 2009
    samanthaseaotter
    recording this right now.
  • donaldwhite1
    July 5, 2009
    donaldwhite1
    This is a slick well made cops and robbers movie. It's set in the 1980's and is the story of a master counterfeiter and a Secret Service agent who is trying to catch him. He becomes obsessed when his partner is killed and steals the money he needs to set up the counterfeiter. ...( read more)I first saw this movie at someone's house who had rented it from Blockbuster. I had the VHS at one time but sold it to a pawn shop. Now I have the DVD. There are some interesting special features on the DVD including missing scenes and alternate endings. Watching it brings back memories of the 1980's. At the beginning of the movie an Arab suicide bomber tries to kill President Reagan but blows himself up falling off a hotel roof. Although the story is all fiction it shows how little things have changed since then. But is also shows how easy it was to counterfeit money back then and why they had to change our money to the more colorful version we have today.
  • mpghoul1973
    June 4, 2009
    mpghoul1973
    exellent and extremly gritty. This film has balls. Big balls. Exellent direction from Freidkin and incredible performances from William Peterson and Willem DaFoe. This film once it gets going keeps you on the edge of your seat. one of my favorites.

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To Live and Die in L.A. Trivia

  • In what movie did "CSI"'s William Petersen stop at nothing to get revenge on Willem Dafoe?  Answer »
  • Who played the artist-turned-forger in To Live and Die in L.A.?  Answer »
  • Which of these movies was NOT made by John Carpenter?  Answer »
  • In what movie did William Petersen and Willem Dafoe star?   Answer »
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