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4K Ultra HD Film Review | Arrow Video
To Live and Die in L.A. (1985) • Limited Edition 4K Ultra HD [Arrow Video] — Friedkin’s comeback is as stylish and heartless as the 1980s
Secret Service agents pursue a master counterfeiter…but who’s really the bad guy?
By the early-1980s, William Friedkin’s star was decidedly fading. The extraordinary back-to-back success of The French Connection (1971) and The Exorcist (1973) had been followed by a major commercial disappointment in Sorcerer (1977), though the film has since become much more highly regarded than it was initially. Friedkin followed up with two comedies barely remembered today (though 1978’s The Brink’s Job is far from a bad film) and the bizarrely flawed, if weirdly compelling, Cruising (1980).
To Live and Die in L.A. — appreciated by many critics and a decent box office performer, though hardly a smash hit — was a comeback of sorts. Typically for this idiosyncratic director, though, Friedkin didn’t manage to follow it up with anything that could even remotely be described as a hit. Equally typically…
