Popular reviews

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  Review by Patrick Willems ★★★★½ 11

  This is the kind of movie where when someone gets shot, their head explodes, the blood is super bright red, and Wang Chung is playing. Masterpiece.

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  Review by Wesley R. Ball ★★★★★ 3

  Purely quintessential 80's cinema- a blood laced, coke-induced thrill ride set to the timeless backdrop of a neon sunset and the eternally melodic bars of Wang Chung.

  Possibly William Friedkin's masterpiece.

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  Review by Filipe Furtado ★★★★½

  William Friedkin’s thematic extension/reversal of The French Connection with gritty 70s semi documentary given to 80s synthetic artifice (all warm colors, decadent behavior, modernist architecture). This would be a gem for Robby Mueller great cinematography alone. It is pure pulp, a dance of seduction and death between cinema’s toughest mannequin (William Petersen) and an ambiguous capitalist zombie (Willem Dafoe). A tale of bad crooks and even worse cops that plays against the usual hyper competence of the genre with a comic series of blunders and failure (I don’t think Petersen does a single thing that actually helps him catch Defoe the whole movie). It starts around Christmas but the only thing shared here is brutality and obsession. It is one…

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  Review by Eli Hayes ★★★★½ 7

  Well that's one way to end a film.

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  Review by sydney ★★★★★ 1

  ACAB canon. one of the only totally rotten, cynical, mean-spirited movies i adore, so beautiful and so disgusting. knowing william petersen is a chill gentleman in real life makes his full body son of a bitch performance even more breathtaking. i've decided it's feminist because the women are cool and smart and the men are nude psychopaths

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  Review by Logan Kenny ★★★★★ 6

  aesthetically invigorating, formally incomparable to any of its contemporaries, paced immaculately with no moments of fat or sluggishness. fronted by two incredible leading performances, one a sweaty psychotic william petersen whose dilated pupils and intensity inflect every inch of the frames he's in, his reaction to finding his partner's body is one of the greatest 20 second performances in film history, and on the other end a flamboyant merciless queer coded willem dafoe who was always just the greatest performer, one of those rare antagonists who is genuinely unpredictable, not necessarily in what he does but in how he executes them, and his posturing and wide eyed grin leaves you feeling rot underneath your skin. the whole movie is essentially…

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  Review by Jake Isgar 10

  "Guess what? Uncle Sam don't give a shit about your expenses. You want bread, fuck a baker."

  Removed from the partnering of the other stylish cop picture featuring William Petersen (Manhunter) and whatever feeling you have about Wang Chung (it's probably wrong), this sleaze jam is as deserving of the praise now being bestowed on the first film in tonight's Friedkin double bill: Sorcerer.

  Friedkin's continual fascination of the internal struggle between good & evil roars through the grimy & steamy haze of Los Angeles. Petersen's Richard Chance is a thrill junkie, stretching each case, bust, and interpersonal relationship to a breaking point; his nemesis, Willem Dafoe's Rick Masters is an icy artist/counterfeiter who never makes a false move. The image of…

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  Review by J. K. ★★★★½ 4

  Friedkin's To Live and Die in L.A. is a film dripping with style. Oozing with thumping synth lines and that west coast, pastel-colored 80's bliss that so many films these days try to emulate. The action sequences are tightly scripted, with brilliant chase scenes and vibrant over-the-top gore that explodes onto the screen with a gritty authenticity. This all culminates in the outstanding final act, which is as unforgettable as it is profound.

  The cast is also phenomenal. Peterson gives us a prophetic glimpse of his character from Michael Mann's Manhunter. Showing that tenacious, unwavering drive to catch his man, and a desperate will to avenge the death of his friend and partner. Willem Dafoe is unsurprisingly a worthy villian…

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  Review by Alex Engquist ★★★★ 1

  Friedkin car chases > other car chases, because in a Friedkin film everyone's already careening wildly toward death; cars let them do it even faster.

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  Review by c h r i s🫀 ★★★★★ 18

  “you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  those red and green brightly bold-colored opening credits are to fucking die for. 

  Willam Friedkin’s relentlessly gritty and sleazy neo-noir cop thriller is a jam packed revenge flick with a back drop of a corrupted and anarchic Los Angeles. A young Willem Dafoe plays weirdo cold-blooded killer and counterfeit money maker being chased by a loose canon secret service agent that heavily chain-smokes and doesn’t play by the rules—except his own. His partner is dead, murdered, and he’ll stop at nothing to get the man holding the weapon, he doesn’t give a shit how he does it or who he hurts along the way! Two powerhouse and borderline psychotic performances from our…

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  Review by zeno 🛸 ★★★★½ 5

  People talk about the neon '80s, or recent movies that attempt to evoke that aesthetic, but I feel like this is a gross oversimplification of what defines the look and feel of a film like To Live and Die in L.A. or ostensibly similar stuff like Manhunter, Scarface, Repo Man (which was also shot by Robby Müller, along with this one and Paris, Texas), or even RoboCop. It's also defined by stark whites and eye-catching compositions, and grit (in the setting and the film grain) that really gives the 'neon' colors a textured glow I have yet to see replicated in any genre throwbacks to this particular era. Vibrant hues bleed into the sleaze and absurdity, literally coloring our perception…

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  Review by WraithApe ★★★★½ 27

  I think this might be my new favourite Friedkin! To Live and Die is a gem that gives us the best of both worlds - bombastic, larger than life 80s actioner meets gritty 70s procedural. The bold font, block lime green and red lettering of the opening credits, combined with Wang Chung's synth-infused title track call to mind the start of Beverly Hills Cop, especially with the montage of city scenes from the wrong side of the track, but it doesn't take long to see that Friedkin is working in a whole different register here. This might just be the template for the dirtier strain of cop actioner like Lethal Weapon. Man, they even stole "I'm too old for this…