Лос-Анджелесте өмір мен өлім: 1985 жылғы фильм

1985 film by William Friedkin
the 1985 film

To Live and Die in L. A. is a 1985 American neo noir action crime thriller film directed and co written by William Friedkin and based on the 1984 novel by former United States Secret Service agent Gerald Petievich, who co wrote the screenplay with Friedkin. The film features William Petersen, Willem Dafoe and John Pankow among others. Wang Chung composed and performed the original music soundtrack. The film tells the story of the lengths to which two Secret Service agents go to arrest a counterfeiter.

After foiling an assassination attempt on President Reagan, Secret Service agents Richard Chance and Jimmy Hart are assigned as counterfeiting investigators in the Los Angeles field office. Chance has a reputation for reckless, impulsive behavior and, unbeknownst to his superiors in the Service, is also corrupt. Hart is three days away from retirement. Alone, Hart stakes out a warehouse in the desert thought to be a print house of counterfeiter and artist Eric "Rick" Masters, and is killed by Masters and his bodyguard, Jack. Chance proclaims to his new partner, John Vukovich, that he will take Masters down no matter what. The two agents attempt to get information on Masters by putting one of his criminal associates, attorney Max Waxman, under surveillance. Vukovich falls asleep on watch, which allows Masters to murder Waxman, who had crossed him. While Vukovich wants to go by the book, Chance becomes increasingly reckless and unethical in pursuit of Masters. He relies on his sexual extortion relationship with parolee/informant Ruth for information, while Vukovich meets privately with Masters' associates, including attorney Bob Grimes, whom he attempts to flip. Grimes, acknowledging a potential conflict of interest that could ruin his legal practice, agrees to set up a meeting between his client and the two agents, who pose as doctors from Palm Springs interested in Masters' counterfeiting services. Masters is reluctant to work with them, but ultimately agrees to print them $1 million worth of fake bills. In turn, Masters demands $30,000 in front money, which is three times the authorized agency limit for buy money. To get the cash, Chance persuades Vukovich to aid him in robbing Thomas Ling, a man whom Ruth previously told Chance is bringing in $50,000 cash to purchase stolen diamonds. Chance and Vukovich intercept Ling at Union Station and seize the cash in an industrial area under the Sixth Street Viaduct. Ling's cover people follow them and, while observing the robbery, open fire and accidentally kill Ling. Chance and Vukovich try to evade them through the streets, freeways and even one of the flood control channels, before a final escape by going the wrong way on the freeway. The next day, the end of their daily briefing includes a bulletin that Ling was an undercover FBI agent who was killed while engaging in a sting operation. Only a generic description of the assailants and their vehicle is given. While Chance and Vukovich did not kill Ling, Vukovich is nonetheless consumed by guilt, while Chance is apathetic and focused solely on getting Masters. Unable to persuade Chance to come clean about their role in Ling's death, Vukovich meets with Grimes, who advises him to turn himself in and testify against Chance in exchange for a lighter sentence. Vukovich refuses to implicate his partner. Chance sets up the buy with Masters, who seems to hint that he is aware of the heist. Chance and Vukovich meet with Masters for the exchange. After inspecting the counterfeit million, the agents attempt to arrest Masters and Jack, but Jack pulls a shotgun. Jack and Chance fatally shoot each other, and Masters escapes. Vukovich gives chase, going to a warehouse a previous informant had told him about. By the time he arrives, Masters has set fire to everything inside, destroying all evidence. Vukovich confronts Masters and during a brief struggle, Masters asks Vukovich why he did not take Grimes' advice to turn his partner in, revealing that Grimes was working on Masters' behalf all along. While Vukovich is stunned at the revelation, Masters grabs a board and knocks him unconscious. Masters then covers Vukovich with shredded paper and is about to set him on fire when Vukovich comes round and shoots Masters. Masters drops his lighter and accidentally sets himself ablaze. Vukovich shoots the burning man, continuing to pull the trigger of his empty gun as Masters burns alive. Dressed more casually, Vukovich visits Ruth as she packs up to leave Los Angeles. He mentions Chance's death, suggesting she had known all along that Ling was an FBI agent and she had played Chance. He knows Chance left her with the remaining cash, which the agency now wants back, but Ruth says she needed it to pay debts. Vukovich declares that Ruth is now working for him, turning into the same "whatever it takes" agent that Chance had been, and stopping her efforts to escape her shady life.

Director William Friedkin was given Gerald Petievich's novel in manuscript form and found it very authentic. The filmmaker was also fascinated by the "absolutely surrealistic nature" of the job of a Secret Service agent outside Washington, D. C. When the film deal was announced, Petievich was investigated by a rival for a pending office promotion, and felt "a lot of resentment against me for making the movie" and "some animosity against me in the Secret Service" existed, exacerbated by the agent in the Los Angeles field office who suddenly resigned a few weeks after initiating the investigation.

As early as the day he cast Petersen, Friedkin thought about killing off Chance towards the end of the film, but according to editor Bud Smith, Vukovich was supposed to be the one who was killed. It went on to make $17.3 million in the United States and Canada, well above its $6 million budget.

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a score of 88% from 51 reviews, with an average rating of 7.3/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "With coke fiends, car chases, and Wang Chung galore, To Live and Die in L. A. is perhaps the ultimate '80s action/thriller." Roger Ebert, film critic for the Chicago Sun Times, gave the film four out of four stars and wrote that "the movie is also first rate. The direction is the key. Friedkin has made some good movies  and some bad ones. This is his comeback, showing the depth and skill of the early pictures". He went on to praise Petersen, "a Chicago stage actor who comes across as tough, wiry and smart. He has some of the qualities of a Steve McQueen". David Ansen, critic for Newsweek, wrote "Shot with gritty flamboyance by Robby Muller, cast with a fine eye for fresh, tough guy faces, To Live and Die in L. A. may be fake savage, but it's fun". The staff at Variety gave the film a mixed review and wrote that it was over the top: "To Live and Die in L. A. looks like a rich man's Miami Vice. William Friedkin's evident attempt to fashion a West Coast equivalent of his 1971 The French Connection is engrossing and diverting enough on a moment to moment basis but is overtooled  Friedkin keeps dialog to a minimum, but what conversation there is proves wildly overloaded with streetwise obscenities, so much so that it becomes something of a joke". In his scathing review for the Washington Post, Paul Attanasio wrote "To Live and Die in L. A. will live briefly and die quickly in L. A., where God hath no wrath like a studio executive with bad grosses. Then again, perhaps it's unfair to hold this overheated and recklessly violent movie to the high standard established by Starsky and Hutch". Movie historian Leonard Maltin seemed to agree with Attanasio, giving TLADILA 1.5 stars out of a possible four: "Try to imagine Miami Vice on the West Coast  here you have it. This picture is so gritty that it's hard to root for anybody—since the good guys are as foul mouthed, avaricious, and sadistic as the bad guys! For a crack Secret Service agent and a master counterfeiter, both Dafoe and Petersen act pretty dumb; Friedkin delivers one of the most spectacular car chases since his own French Connection, along with a galvanizing score by Wang Chung, but even that's not enough to counteract the bad taste this film leaves behind." Jay Scott, in his review for The Globe and Mail, wrote "Pity poor Los Angeles: first the San Andreas fault and now this. The thing about it is, To Live and Die in L. A., for all its amorality and downright immorality, is a cracker jack thriller, tense and exciting and unpredictable, and more grimy fun than any moralist will want it to be". Time criticized its "brutal, bloated car chase sequence pilfered from Friedkin's nifty The French Connection", and called it "a fetid movie hybrid: Miami Vile". Almost two decades later, a review in The Digital Fix called the film "A sun bleached study in corruption and soul destroying brutality, this film by the notoriously erratic but sometimes brilliant William Friedkin is nasty, cynical and incredibly good." The film was voted as the 19th best film set in Los Angeles in the last 25 years by a group of Los Angeles Times writers and editors with two criteria: "The movie had to communicate some inherent truth about the L. A. experience, and only one film per director was allowed on the list". William Friedkin singled out the movie as one of his favorite movies: "I love the film, and I value my films or don’t value them in a different way. When I think of them in terms of success, I think of how close I came to my original vision of it. The two films where I came extremely close were To Live and Die in L. A. and Sorcerer.

Although criticized at the time for the lack of accomplished celebrities in its cast, He wanted them to compose the score for his film after listening to the band's previous studio album, Points on the Curve (1984). He was so taken with the album that he took one of the songs straight off the album, "Wait", and used it as part of the soundtrack. "Wait" plays at the end credits of the film. Every song on the soundtrack, excluding the title song and "Wait", was written and recorded within a two week period. Only after Wang Chung saw a rough cut of the film did they produce the title song. On November 21, 2016, Arrow Video released a Region B Blu ray edition with the old features and new features with the composer, stunt co ordinator, William Petersen, Debra Feuer and Dwier Brown. On November 22, 2016, Shout Factory released a Collector's Edition, restoring the original DVD's special features and adding new ones. Kino Lorber released the movie on Ultra HD Blu ray and Blu Ray on July 18, 2023.

The car chase featured in the film has consistently been ranked among the best car chase sequences on film, often appearing alongside The French Connection (another Friedkin directed film), The Seven Ups, The Blues Brothers, Ronin and Bullitt.

In 2015, William Friedkin announced plans to develop a TV series based on the movie for WGN America. However, in March 2021, WGA America was converted into the general news channel NewsNation. Friedkin died in August 2023.