In this new series, I'm going to highlight a good movie that failed to make it big at the box office, and try to dissect why. Today, To Live and Die in L.A.
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There are two kinds of box office duds. The first kind are the movies that looked, felt, and sounded like flops out of the gate that more or less fulfill their heavily foreshadowed destiny. If you were shocked, for instance, that the remake of The Crow, a poorly reviewed remake of a 90s gothic classic with a lead that died in the making of the movie, bombed, then you haven't been taking the temperature of the room for years. Or you're studio executive, either one. The second kind are the good movies that didn't catch on or find their audience during their box office run. And these are the movies I personally find more interesting. Because they're often a gut check for where the movie business was at the time. So, in this new little running series, I'm going to highlight a good movie that failed to make it big at the box office, and try to dissect why.
The Setup
The movie follows a vengeful Secret Service agent, Richard Chance (William Petersen) who's looking to take down a major counterfeiter (Willem Dafoe) who also had his partner murdered. But as Chance pushes harder and harder for revenge, he may be careening down a road of no return.
Why It Should Have Worked
Looking at the pedigree of this movie may make you wonder how this movie wasn't a big success. We've got the director of The French Connection William Freidkin co-writing and directing the movie, the stars include William Petersen, Willem Dafoe and John Tuturro, and a soundtrack by Wang Chung coming out a year after Miami Vice has taken hold.
The resulting movie is a twisty neo-noir that features plenty of solid chase sequences with great performance all around including an energetic turn from Petersen as our go-for-broke young hotshot and Dafoe as our intimidating villain. It also features another banger of a car chase sequence from the director of one of the best ever (the aforementioned French Connection). And reviews at the time were strong. So what happened?
The resulting movie is a twisty neo-noir that features plenty of solid chase sequences with great performance all around including an energetic turn from Petersen as our go-for-broke young hotshot and Dafoe as our intimidating villain. It also features another banger of a car chase sequence from the director of one of the best ever (the aforementioned French Connection). And reviews at the time were strong. So what happened?
Serious Cop Movies Weren't Selling
If you want to piece together why this gritty crime drama didn't take hold in 1985, you'll want to look at the box office champ for the first ten weeks of 1985. A holdover from 1984: Beverly Hills Cop. Just scanning the big box office movies from 1985 will give the distinct impression that audiences wanted two things. They wanted to laughs, they wanted action, or they wanted something that made them feel real good about American exceptionalism (sometimes these could all be lumped together).
So if your movie had a cop, he better either be hilarious like Eddie Murphy or a verified action star like Chuck Norris, Stallone or Arnold.
If the "adult movie crowd" did come out, they were coming out for classy dramas like The Color Purple, Cocoon or Out of Africa.
If the "adult movie crowd" did come out, they were coming out for classy dramas like The Color Purple, Cocoon or Out of Africa.
However, you can look at a movie like Witness, the 8th highest grossing movie domestically for 1985 and wonder...well clearly there was an audience for some kind of neo-noir drama right? There was...if you could find a star to attach to it.
Star Power Was Alive and Well in the 80s
I could come up with a lot of reasons why Witness succeeded where To Live and Die in LA failed by talking about the premise (Witness has a great hook of a cop being undercover with the Amish with nibbles of romance and fish-out-of-water comedy whereas To Live and Die in LA is a straight crime movie etc.)
But if I'm being honest, the reason Witness made waves was because it starred Harrison Ford. Ford was fresh off the two of the most popular franchises of all time. He was Han Solo and Indiana Jones and even the biggest bomb of his career Blade Runner was set to be a cult classic, even then. So casting him as another complicated hero in another movie with romance, humor and action? Slam dunk.
But if I'm being honest, the reason Witness made waves was because it starred Harrison Ford. Ford was fresh off the two of the most popular franchises of all time. He was Han Solo and Indiana Jones and even the biggest bomb of his career Blade Runner was set to be a cult classic, even then. So casting him as another complicated hero in another movie with romance, humor and action? Slam dunk.
You gotta make something that refutes Ford's on-screen charisma like The Mosquito Coast to deny the Ford bump.
Looking at the cast of To Live and Die In L.A. you might be wondering...weren't these guys all known entities? No they weren't. Pretty intentionally actually. William Friedkin hired unknowns partially to get what he wanted but also to limit his movie's budget.
A year later, both of these men would've been better known. Especially Dafoe. While Petersen got a starring role with Miami Vice showrunner Michael Mann that also flopped, the underrated Manhunter, Dafoe gave an Oscar-nominated turn in Platoon where his acting is actually the film's most lasting/endearing image.
It's possible it wouldn't have worked perfectly, since Dafoe hadn't developed his reputation and penchant for portraying bad guys yet, but it wouldn't have hurt. Especially when you look at comments/reviews noting the lack of star power.
And finally we should talk about why the movie's content wasn't ideal for an eighties audience, outside of audience trends.
This Should've Been About Cocaine or Revenge Right?
To Live and Die in L.A. is interesting because it's kind of a revenge movie in the body of a crime movie. Petersen's partner is killed investigating Dafoe. He wants revenge. He's going to do whatever he has to do to get said revenge and take down Dafoe.
Now I kinda like the cat and mouse game that the movie is playing and the lengths Petersen's Chance goes to ingratiate himself with his target. But he's just one player in a larger crime saga where the bigger emphasis is on who's playing who and who's getting money from where and who will snitch or not snitch. All that stuff. As much as the film portrays Chance as a reckless daredevil that is bound to die early because of his actions, this doesn't feel like a descent into madness. It feels like a crime movie.
And the justification for going after Dafoe is that he is a...counterfeiter. Which isn't the sexiest of crimes, let alone in the eighties when every baddie every movie cop was firing at was involved in drugs, even the funny ones.
Half of the tension in Beverly Hills Cop exists because the local cops don't believe Axel when he tells them that a local businessman is dealing cocaine. And in the eighties, not that this was a fair or right analysis, there was no bigger villain than a drug dealer. To eighties audiences, drug dealers were folks who killed people and destroyed communities. But a guy making funny money? Not as easy to point out how that hurts other people.
As an example for how modern shows and movies do this, Reacher's entire first season centers around a counterfeiting operation...that's tied to South American drug dealers who murder folks brutally.
So without the jokes. Without the stars. And without a simplistic baseline that eighties audiences could eat up, it makes sense that To Live and Die in L.A. didn't click with audiences upon release. And if you haven't I recommend you check it out. Because...there's something great about the movie that really makes it appeal to modern audiences.
Cops as Criminals
One thing I neglected to bring up is that the movie's biggest car chase, a frenetic ride through side streets, the reservoir, and then the wrong way on an L.A. freeway, is triggered by...our two cops robbing someone for money to get Dafoe in their good graces. The man they rob is accidentally killed in an early firefight and these two have to move hell and high water to make it out alive. Only to find out that the man they robbed and died was a federal agent.
The thing that I love about this movie is that Petersen's Chance isn't just a careless hotshot. He constantly abuses his police powers not to stop a major criminal, but to get revenge. And many in his orbit capitulate to him because they want to help him get his revenge.
And it doesn't matter to him that a man he captured breaks free from his custody or that he got a fed killed, or that he's lording his police power over his romantic partner/informant. It's all justified for the "job" which is really revenge.
That feels truer than almost every cop/crime movie I've seen, especially from the eighties. Hell, it's truer than 90 percent of the cop dramas on network television that deify police officers. William Petersen's cop may not be the villain of this movie. But he's not good. And that's refreshing after deluge of "good cop" portrayals.
That feels truer than almost every cop/crime movie I've seen, especially from the eighties. Hell, it's truer than 90 percent of the cop dramas on network television that deify police officers. William Petersen's cop may not be the villain of this movie. But he's not good. And that's refreshing after deluge of "good cop" portrayals.
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