To Live and Die in L.A. (85, William Friedkin)

After making some Oscar-winning classics in the 1970's, William Friedkin was mostly demoted to a director of stylish yet underappreciated genre thrillers, but even his The French Connection can't hold a candle to this mid-80's effort, which may be the most tonally-efficient and hardest-nailed cop flick ever made. Those who make police procedurals should take a look at this film and see how to take procedure and make it cinematic. Mongos might scoff at the 80's trappings, the now-cliched plotlines, and the Wang Chung soundtrack, but those who have advanced beyond the laughing at nostalgia blockage will see that the film is still extremely stylish and manages to avoid MTV style editing in favor of a more innovative approach to scene and tone transitions. 

And looking chronologically, you might also notice that To Live and Die predates a lot of things that might crop up as cliched (esp. the "I'm too old for this *beep* line that it seems Shane Black stole for Lethal Weapon). More importantly though, almost all of Friedkin's characters have depth and personality. And I'm not talking about ham. These characters all inhabit a slightly over-the-top world, but they bring it back down to life by acting as naturally as possible. William Petersen especially shines here, portraying Chance with the right mixture of determination and human degradation that won a lesser performance by Gene Hackman an Oscar in the 1970's. 

But what makes things even more interesting is the way in which Friedkin plays with the notions of protagonist and antagonist in this film. He worked with it somewhat in The French Connection by making Popeye Doyle a self-absorbed racist bastard, but in that film, the enemy's only personal traits was that he was a smarmy French businessman. And that's where the difference and shades come in here. By the end of the film, Masters (Willem Dafoe) is much more the protagonist than Chance or Vukovich. 

That's not to say that Chance and Vukovich aren't complex or likable characters, but the film seems to take place in this capitalist dreamland, a place where money's so sought after that people deal in the stuff, and the film's characters simply have degrees to which they follow that dreamland's ethics. The film's opening sets this dichotomy into place as the moment of Masters destroying his legitimate art is followed by a whirlwind credit sequence depicting street level counterfeiting. 

But as an artist living in the 1980's, Masters also seems to find solace in his "funny money." Take, for instance, Friedkin's painstakingly accurate portrayal of the counterfeiting process. It seems important when you consider that we never see Masters working on the supposed masterpieces that he burns. Master's knack for art purifies the artless object, makes it clean (which may be why the final step in the process is running the bills through a dryer: now that he has "washed" the object of its blase use, he has to dry it). 

At one point, Masters pays a street level thug with the bills for a prison hit on a potential informant. After the hit goes south, Masters murders the criminals and burns the money. Crouching naked in front of his fireplace, he piles handfuls of the bills onto a roaring fire. Asked why he's doing it, he says that he can't use it now that someone has "handled" it. There's a certain self-assured purity to what Masters does, but the gig does have occupational hazards like the murder of a federal officer. Near the end of the film, it becomes clear that Masters is simply waiting for the other shoe to drop, recognizing that selling out his artistic talent to capitalist *beep* is to place himself on a lit fuse. 

In the end though, because he recognizes these things, Masters' soul is clean. He may contribute and participate in the cash craze surrounding him, but on the inside, he's just a tortured artist who unfortunately went for the money. And he burns for it. 

Petersen's Chance is a much more recognizable character. His determination, grit, and uncompromising attitude puts him in line with any number of memorable 70's cops, and as anyone who has seen The French Connection can tell you, Friedkin does this kind of character better than anyone else. But what makes this film better than the others is that he not only creates a character with Petersen that fits all of the genre necessities, but he allows a reflexivity that comments on the character. 

After his partner is killed, Chance goes off the grid in his attempts to get revenge. We've all heard this plot many, many times. When he tells Vukovich, "I don't give a *beep* how I do it," we're coached enough in this type of cop movie to know that he's probably going to do some improper off-the-books kind of policing. And around the time he is taking undercover feds hostage and stealing money from them to make a counterfeit deal with Masters, you're fairly sure he has gone off the deep end. 

In other words, he too works outside of the system of money and procedure that drives the capitalist wonderland in 1985. In this sentiment, he and Masters are doppelgangers to a degree. Both work (and die) inside of the system's confines, but both seem to have deeper motivations than money or the upholding of the law. Masters would really like to express himself as an artist, and Chance upholds an older honor, that of vengeance for a fallen brother-in-arms. Masters ultimately fails because he decides to put his artistic talent in service of the capitalist wonderland. Chance ultimately dies because he pays heed to the underwritten law. Had either character gone all the way with his intention, things may have turned out positively. 

Then again, there seems to be a distinction between the characters, and Friedkin does place evaluative judgment on the value of their actions. This assessment comes primarily through the characters' interactions with their girlfriends. There's really no niceties or tenderness between Chance and Ruth (Darlanne Fluegel). She acts as an informant and as a lover with Chance, but he sees her through his work and her position in the corrupt business world. 

When he visits her at a strip club where she works at the door, she has to take a break from their conversation to admit customers. As she does so, Chance turns around, and the camera takes his point of view as to see the strippers at work on the other side of the room. After a moment, he turns back to Ruth and continues his business. Taken as continuity, this scene implies that Chance sees his girlfriend as a prostitute. After all, the shot of the strippers is from his point of view. In this relationship, the transaction of information has about the same levity as the transaction of sex. This view might explain why our protagonist can pretty much rape Ruth after the film's big car chase without moral reflection. 

This relationship compares unfavorably to Masters' relationship with performance artist Bianca (Debra Feuer). If nothing else, the relationship remains Masters' one connection to his true calling. Besides scenes of Masters destroying his art and counterfeit money, the moments he spends with Bianca round out his character. Dafoe inflects a certain sadness with his admiration as he watches his love at work as if he wishes he could be so true to his artistic intentions. 

But he also possesses her image on video. However, unlike Chance's control over Ruth, he does not use it for his own devices but as a playful addition to their love life. Later, he uses the same video to capture his sadness at his own demise and leaves it for Bianca, the one person that understands him as more than a soulless counterfeiter and a member of the soulless society that envelops the characters. After Masters' death, his attorney asks Bianca how she could stand to stay with him for so long. She asks him why he represented Masters. He replies, "Cause that's business." Without smiling, she nods, leaves the house, and takes off with her new girlfriend, a fellow dancer whom Masters had set her up with. They drive off into the sunset. 

Immediately afterward, we find out how Chance leaves Ruth. Evidently haunted by his partner's death, Vukovich has taken on his persona. In "Chance mode," he visits Ruth at her home and finds her packing up, ready to blow town. When asked if she knew Chance died, she says, "I'm busy." He tells Ruth that he knows she set them up earlier in the murder of an undercover agent. He then lets her know that she works for him now. Because Chance's relationship with her was based upon the system and its prostitute-client relationships, she doesn't have a clear future, and no one really mourns Chance's memory. He's simply a part of the city and its money-drunk corruption. 

Friedkin does ultimately have pity on Chance. The ending credits never play against black but to a changing series of tracking shots from a car. The sequence changes locations from the city to a bridge and ultimately to a sunset in the country. Friedkin then cuts from that sunset to an earlier shot of Chance in his apartment. Dead as a victim of the system, Chance is finally taken out of the squalor and horror of that scene and given a pastoral resting place outside of the film, after its ending credits. 

Through this often innovative and unexpectedly insightful use of character types and rewriting of traditional protagonist-antagonist roles, Friedkin really makes To Live and Die in L.A. a masterpiece of 80's cinema. The way the film looks, feels, sounds, talks, and moves is ahead of its time, so much so that to see it 24 years out probably makes it seem comprised completely of cliche. However, hardly content to do a cross between The French Connection and Miami Vice (Michael Mann sued him for copyright infringement for perceived similarities between the film and the then-hip TV show), Friedkin presents an earnest and subtle criticism of 80's consumer insanity, a sophisticated statement that helps the film age much more gracefully than any of its more famous counterparts.