To Live and Die in L.A. 4K 1985 Ultra HD 2160p

Story Movie

The partner of U.S. Secret Service officer Richard Chance is killed by the elusive counterfeiter Masters. Richard vows to put the killer behind bars, even if he has to commit the crime himself.

Review 4K Movie

How high is the moral dilemma in deciding to transgress the law, especially if you are the personification of this formidable word? Not very high if you are obsessed with the purpose for which you are taking this step! This is the main character of this film, who spit on any legality and chaotically goes through the thorns of violations of all written and unwritten rules and regulations, sometimes without realizing whether he will come to his goal, whether he will not lose his way and whether he will be able to get away with it! He has few elements in his pocket that can lead him to success. All he has is a secret service badge, which protects him from many problems only until the red line is crossed. He has a not-so-reliable partner who may turn him in to his superiors for idealistic reasons. He has a weapon, considerable professional experience, and a girl informant, also not disposable to trust. But most importantly, he has a mad combination of professional acumen and thirst for revenge, with which he is ready not even to go, to run to the goal, knocking down everything in his path, regardless of the opposition in the form of bureaucratic delays of superiors and murderous dodging of the main enemy, a maturing counterfeiter, who has long been beyond that red line, and is not and will not be afraid of either rival gangsters, or law enforcement agencies, and even more so bloodstained avenging agent.

The confrontation between these two flawed individuals with their own goals will be the center for any associated individual. And almost every one of these individuals will show their individuality, trying to play their own game in the resulting confrontation. However, someone will be shot by the villain Masters (Willem Defoe), someone will suffer a less pleasant fate on the part of Agent Chance (William Petersen), and someone will manage to get out of the meat grinder, the outcome of which for everyone can be the saddest way, because whether you are Masters' lawyer, his girlfriend, Chance's partner, his informant, Masters' sidekick, there's no telling how lucky you'll be, and you're going to need luck, because no matter how hard you try to take control of the situation, you're just a particle of a poisonous substance called the Los Angeles underworld. A particle that has many of its own kind, just as greedy and obsessed, ready to trample you on their way, but constantly collide with each other, breaking all calculations, organizing only a chaotic death race like the one that had to endure Chance and his partner, who found themselves between two fires in the form of gangsters and the FBI, when the line is already crossed and to save their skin from the second fire, perhaps one of them will have to sacrifice his partner. But first you have to get through the first fire, which can both ruin you and get you off the hook, saving your position.

William Friedkin, who shone in the early 70's as the founder of a whole trend in the crime drama genre with “The French Connection”, by the year 85, had already squandered his early gains, and tried to fit his genre vision into the stream of a decade of brisk action films that replaced their sullen predecessors like “The Connection”. “To Live and Die in L.A.” is an amazing attempt to replicate all the elements of the director's Oscar-winning hit, but manages to remain a completely self-contained film. After the gloomy gray New York of “Connected” Friedkin again masterfully draws the inner city shell, this time of sunny Los Angeles, which from the screen as if breathes its characters, among whom there is not a single positive.
Each of the heroes is not bent on any dirty methods to get away with it, which in many ways and relates the list of such different characters, for the embodiment of which, however, were intentionally unremarkable (except for Defoe) performers, with impressive authenticity embodying their characters, be it William Petersen as a straightforward and obsessive operative, Dean Stokwell as a calculating lawyer, Turturro, even then able to decorate any frame. But the main man here is Willem Dafoe in his first successful role, creating a charismatic portrait of a mysterious and brutal criminal.

Using the typical 80's style and colorful soundtrack, Friedkin managed to fit visually into the mood of the new decade, but not content, because in the 80's in the genre there was no place for misanthropes, so the film failed at the box office, remaining forgotten, and the director finally fell out of favor, and the film was not saved even super exciting and realistic chase, which Friedkin surpassed his own achievement in the form of a race for the subway in 'The French Connection'. Nevertheless, even in comparison with modern 'The Departed' one can see parallels with 'L.A.' regarding the brutally pessimistic narrative, but in the '80s William was clearly not in the mood to play by genre rules, unlike the late Scorsese, whose plot developments no longer represent something original, and whose efforts to pump up the drama look too artificial, unlike the stingy Friedkin, whose 'To Live and Die in L.A.' simply carries the viewer along with it. simply carries the viewer along with the characters, leading to a brutal and cynical finale in which the heroes are destined to pay for all their vices, for as the character of “Secrets of L.A.” Captain Dudley Smith said: “This is the City of Angels, son! And you ain't got no wings! ”