At the beginning of the 1970s, American filmmaker William Friedkin made two everlasting classics - The French Connection and The Exorcist. With these highly acclaimed statement pictures, Friedkin not only established himself as one of the most skilled filmmakers in the business, but he also became a very bankable director. These box office splashes, however, were followed by a quartet of financially or qualitatively lesser projects: Sorcerer, The Brink’s Job, Cruising and Deal of the Century. Even though Sorcerer is a monumentally beautiful film, its box office results started a series of films that made the critics and the audience question the trajectory of Friedkin’s career, which is why the filmmaker’s 1985 ferociously stylish neo-noir masterpiece was seen by many as his comeback moment. Both to form and to financial success.

To Live and Die in L.A. is a bold, erratic, neon-soaked fever dream of 1980s nihilism wrapped in the stylish trench coat of a cop thriller. It’s a movie that swerves away from formula at every turn presenting a harsh, non-traditional view of Los Angeles, eschewing tourist views in favour of stark industrial spaces and neon-soaked grit. Its plot structure gleefully throws away conventions, killing off characters with ruthless efficiency and introducing moral ambiguity as the film’s only true compass.

The two leads both turn in stellar performances - a young Willem Dafoe as the intellectual artist and counterfeiter and William Peterson as the crooked cop obsessed with bringing him down. Wang Chung's score delivers a synth-heavy masterpiece of mood but it doesn't just accompany the film; it defines it. Pulsing basslines, eerie electronic hums, and soaring arpeggios turn Los Angeles into a landscape of existential dread and strange beauty. This isn’t just a crime movie. It’s a time capsule, a tone poem, a sonic hallucination of what it meant to chase shadows through the underbelly of Reagan-era America.

Friedkin’s assured and elegant direction is complemented by the keen eye and talent of Robby Müller, the legend of cinematography who shot movies including Wenders’ Paris, Texas and Jarmusch’s Dead Man. While Friedkin clearly took some cues from Micheal Mann's Miami Vice, To Live and Die in L.A. is something closer to an amoral masterpiece. Mann’s characters in Thief, Heat and of course, Miami Vice, operate on the edges of a line drawn by him so that the audience is always on their side. Friedkin spray paints “FUCK” in all caps over that line. Where directors like Mann or Richard Donner restore order at the end of their films Friedkin sows more chaos because it reflects the world he sees.