User reviews

This film was probably written for William Peterson when someone in Hollywood was trying to make him a star. Everything seems to have been made to feature William rocking skin tight jeans to showcase his bowlegs while he ran like a track star and jumped over chairs in an airport.

His character was an annoying punk Treasury agent who was so obnoxious toward everyone he spoke to that it's hard to believe that he lived long enough to meet the age requirement for his job.

Speaking of his job, he was so bad at his job that he fell asleep during a stakeout and the subject of the surveillance was murdered right under his nose. Next, he lost a witness who was released from prison under his supervision by uncuffing the witness so that the witness could beat him up and escape.

This is a bad film, with clumsy dialog, a thin story line and poor writing. To illustrate how forgettable this thing is, I saw it in the '80s when it came out and somehow didn't remember how bad it was because I just now watched it again. It hasn't aged well at all.

Nostalgia is a powerful thing. Only sober, can we return to the films of our youth, and see what was what. "To Live and Die in LA" is clearly awful, but at the time, we somehow missed how clunky, and terribly written it was. So many good actors are in it, and Billy Friedkin had a rep, but now this film looks more dated than a bad silent film. The faux style, and hyper-thin cast, speaks of that decade where sex, drugs, and rock and roll died. It is no wonder that Michael Mann sued, as the film has that "Manhunter" / "Miami Vice" high-art sweaty sheen to it, when we were too slick (or too high) to know we were lame. The dialog is laughable, but so too are the actors leaping, shooting, and doing stunts that seem as everyone might have been addled. Trust me, this is a terrible film, and the one great scene should be fast forwarded to, as you will wince at how ham-handed EVERY part of this work is. As I read the positive reviews here, I am reminded why the Internet is popular. Without taste or an aesthetic criteria, everybody has their say. I would argue that if you are not shocked by how horrible this film is, that you should not be trusted to review anything beyond fast-food. As a testament to the worst decade in art within my 50 years, "To Live and Die in LA" is wonderfly AWFUL. It will remind you of a great Louden Wainwright lyric "The good old days are dead and gone ... it's why their good / It's cuz their gone!"

I do not believe that my fellow reviewer thought that this film was one of the best of the 1980s! Even Willem Dafoe, when he appeared on Lipton's show, said that people still thought he was a great actor even though he co-starred in "To Live and Die in LA." I have to say, it's among the worst movies I've ever seen, and I've seen a huge number of movies in my long life.

No, it's not as bad as, for instance, anything featuring the Mutant Ninja Turtles," or "Howard the Duck" but none the less...BAD. It was needlessly bloody, stiffly acted, and even though Friedkin directed many fine movies, this was not one of them.