To Live and Die in LA
A classic crime thriller from director William Friedkin and producer Irving Levin stars William Peterson and Willem Dafoe as federal agent and criminal in a cat and mouse drama.
Film making 18/25
Video 18/25
Audio 19/25
Bonus Features 15/25
Total 70/100
Richard Chance played by William Peterson of CSI fame is a Secret Service agent chasing down counterfeiters and trying to get to the bottom of a murder by a notorious forger. Willem Dafoe plays the highly skilled counterfeiter who goes beyond the mere art of forgery and uses his skills as best he can to evade the law.
When Chance finds his murdered partner who was days away from retirement he goes after the counterfeiter responsible named Richard Masters. Masters, played by Willem Dafoe, is the counterfeiter who is always one step ahead of the federal agents until the inevitable end.
When superiors assign Chance a new partner, John Volkovich, he at first is reluctant to follow the lead of Chance as he is reckless and fails to follow procedure. Chance uses snitches and flaunts the law in his pursuit of Masters and even his new partner played by John Pankow can’t hold him back.
By the end they do get toe to toe with Masters after killing an undercover FBI agent to steal front money the agent was using in another case. Masters meets both agents as they try to use the money they stole from the undercover FBI agent to buy some counterfeit money from him.
Masters sees through their scheme and when his body guard shoots and kills Chance only to be killed himself both Masters and Volkovich escape unscathed. Through some quirky twist of fate the investigation of the FBI agent ends and Volkovich winds up killing Masters at his warehouse.
Volkovich ends up finding the snitch that Chance was sleeping with and using as a lead to find Masters and informs her she now works for him. There’s also a lot of bad cop even worse cop and taking the law into their own hands in To Live and Die in LA as well as the usual 80’s themes of police and government agents from the period.
The film is pretty good but quite dated when you look at things like the car chase and final fiery scene where Masters is trying to erase his trail by burning his warehouse. The film is good but not great and has music as well by Wang Chung but is one of those older films that doesn’t age well.
I found the film good but things got out of hand with the agents going overboard recklessly killing criminals and other quintessential bad cop schemes. William Peterson does a bad job of playing the bad cop, federal agent, whatever, and most of what he does seems more out of a sense of catching the bad guy and not revenge for his slain partner.
You just can’t have much sympathy for the guy when he uses so many people on a day to day basis even before his partner was dropped into a dumpster. Volkovich also takes things a bit too easily going from strict agent who follows the rules to witless follower of the grizzled and street smart Chance.
To Live and Die in LA is one of those great rentals to see just how oddly they made some films back in the 80’s and the extras like the one hit wonder Wang Chung who did all the music. The film is about as good as your going to get from a 1985 movie transferred to Blu-ray in both video and audio but audio should have been better.
The video is grainy throughout but passable for color and pretty much everything else which you can compare against the included DVD of the film. The film also does well with audio using DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio but this was a bit disappointing and lower quality.
I have heard other films this old on Blu-ray and found better use of bass and other areas of sound but not as well done for surround mixing as To Live and Die in LA was. The film was made when surround mixing wasn’t the norm but the audio does have some good rear use but with questionable overall quality.
Bonus content is also a letdown with deleted scenes and an alternate ending, a making of feature and audio commentary and a couple of other features. The making of feature is interesting but all the other features are pretty common for additional content.
The most annoying feature is all the bonus content is on the standard DVD and not included on the Blu-ray disc so you have to toss the Blu-ray aside and view the standard DVD and its content to enjoy any of the extras. To Live and Die in LA is one of those movies that is worth a single viewing if nothing else than to see these actors in their early career.
To Live and Die IN LA is well worth a rental but the Blu-ray edition is not really worth purchase even though it does have the standard DVD as well.