To Live and Die in L.A.

Directed by William Friedkin, To Live and Die in L.A. follows loose-cannon treasury agent Richard Chance (William Petersen) as he and his partner (John Pankow’s John) bend various rules to take down a slick forger (Willem Dafoe’s Eric Masters). Filmmaker Friedkin, working from his and Gerald Petievich’s screenplay, delivers a propulsive thriller that only grows more and more absorbing as it unfolds, as the movie benefits from an almost inherently engrossing narrative that’s been enhanced with top-notch performances and memorable set-pieces – with, in terms of the latter, the justifiably indelible car chase certainly ranking high on the movie’s list of memorable attributes. (This is to say nothing, certainly, of Petersen’s often electrifying work as the amped-up protagonist, with the actor’s mesmerizing turn undoubtedly matched by his uniformly impressive roster of costars.) It’s worth noting, too, that Friedkin does an excellent job of raising the stakes on an impressively frequent basis, as Richard and John keep digging themselves deeper and deeper into a hole of their own making – with the recurring emphasis on Dafoe’s character’s exploits certainly filling out the entire picture to an often enthralling degree. By the time the gripping and genuinely shocking climactic stretch rolls around, To Live and Die in L.A., which is admittedly perhaps just a touch longer than necessary, has cemented its place as a first-class crime thriller that holds up remarkably well all these years later.

***1/2 out of ****