"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…

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 set to see replicated in any genre throwbacks to this particular era. Vibrant hues bleed into the sleaze and absurdity, literally coloring our perception…

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…

If I was one of your asshole cronies, you'd be spread eagle on your desk to do this for me!

A true underrated gem. The song To Live and Die in L.A. over the opening of the cars and bikes driving matches up so well its crazy. The shot from the gun blasting into the sun soaked skyline of L.A. in that title sequence. The counterfeit sequence. Chance takes the cuffs off Cody like a dumbass! Up until then he's a hard ass. Going real dirty to get the cash for Masters. That car chase is out of this world. Vukovich in the backseat freaking the fuck out while Chance compares it to jumping off a goddamn bridge, what a…

To Live and Die in LA: when his partner is murdered by a counterfeiter a rabid secret serviceman will do anything to avenge him. All the classic cop tropes are in here: the three days left on the job veteran, mismatched and reluctant partners, etc etc. However, instead of the one-dimensional ‘good cop bad cop’, we get two complex and grey characters going through a moral minefield. For relatively unknown actors (at the time), the performances across the board are rock solid, particularly young Willem Dafoe’s slimy and menacing ultra-villain. The star for me is Friedkin; his direction here is outstanding and the opening 15 minutes or so has some bold editing, imagery, and musical choices – almost giving the…

To Live in Die in L.A. is an action film concerning the efforts of a Secret Service agent named Richard Chance who attempts to take down a notorious counterfeiter named Eric Masters, after Masters kills his partner in a raid gone wrong. He’s eventually teamed up with a new partner named John Vukovich whose anxious with working with him, and works with an informant named Ruth Lanier – and I think that one of the things that becomes apparent about my description of the plot of this movie is that it seems completely like a routine cop film – although what’s striking about To Live and Die in L.A. is that it’s a movie that operates on such a ruthless…