Review of To Live and Die in L.A. (1985) by Adrian D — 01 May 2008

5/2/2008 Update: I've seen my DVD about 7 times already, and I've never gotten tried of it. I'm just going to declare this as my new favorite movie.

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I enjoyed this movie far better than expected. At first, I thought "To Live and Die in L.A." was just the name of a Tupac Shakur song--I had no idea it was the name of an actual movie. But besides having a sick car chase (I LOVE car chases!) and Willem Dafoe (who I'd see in anything), my main motivation for buying this movie on Amazon was my all-time favorite TV show, "Miami Vice". In fact, the show's executive producer, Michael Mann, sued William Friedkin for plagerism (Mann lost, but they're good friends now). The similarities are there, but the movie is far grittier and darker than the series could have ever been. As far as morals go, there are literally no good characters in this movie. Everyone's either an antagonist or an anti-hero. The ending has a very good twist, which probably could have set the stage for a sequel, but looking back, it was a wise decision not to (I should also note that on the DVD, there's an alternate ending which was also wisely jettisoned, because it was horrible). The score by Wang Chung (yeah, THAT Wang Chung) is amazing, so is the always fun Willem Dafoe, setting the stage for the villainery typecasting he'd have for much of his career. But the biggest surprise I got out of TLADILA, was the new-found respect I have for William Peterson. It never dawned on me on how cool he was. It's painful to see him go from a character like Richard Chance--a reckless asshole with nothing really to live for, but is so ultra-cool, you gotta love him--to doing....C.S.I. He really should have been a box-office star!