What is the one big difference between the films of 1980’s and any other time?The music.
Barring a handful of films most stand out films made in the 1980’s have really bad music. Noting could substantiate my claim better than William Friedkin’s To Live and Die in LA (1985).
Most of us don’t think of William Friedkin beyond The French Connection and The Exorcist and many of us wouldn’t have had the opportunity to experience the last big film he made, Crusing, featuring Al Pacino. Friedkin’s LA is almost like a precursor to most of the action stuff that we were subjected to in the mid and late 1980’s.
The story might come across as very straight and simple but in the hands of Friedkin it is anything but that. A cop loses his partner while pursuing a master counterfeiter and his one point short-term aim in life is to put the guy in jail. He and his new partner approach the fraudster with a job but can’t raise the advance needed to get the task going. The cops end up robbing a diamond dealer who eventually dies in the bargain. They soon learn that the dealer was actually an undercover cop. The guilt starts taking its toll on one of the cops but the other one couldn’t care less for he is only interested in avenging his partner’s death. At the trade off things go bad and everyone cops it barring the guilt-ridden cop. If you thought the seemingly upright police officer would change his ways, you couldn’t be more wrong. He carries on as if nothing ever happened and moreover he becomes someone who, after seeing it all, doesn’t really mind pushing the limits.
The film stands and delivers even after two decades and you have to see the chase scene here to believe that Friedkin could better the one from The French Connection. Shot in gang territory the film successfully depicts Los Angeles as never before. So much so that a lot of John Woo films that eventually inspired Tarantino might have taken in a lot from this underrated Friedkin gem. It’s the then contemporary music of Wang Chung that fails To Live and Die in LA. According to film trivia Friedkin zeroed in on them as he felt that the band stood out from the rest of contemporary music! There’s even a title track with cheesy vocals. Something that Friedkin had specially instructed to avoid but changed his mind when he heard the track!
The second example would be Michael Mann’s Manhunter. A fantastic film that still beats the crap out of the Brett Ratner version any day of the week; only the music sounds dated. Even the soundtracks of Top Gun, Beverly Hills Cop soundtrack seems jarring today. Many would consider the soundtrack of the cult classic The Blade Runner by Vangelies a mismatch today.
A majority of the filmmakers who were calling the shots in the 1980’s were the hot shots of 1970’s whose clout was lessening thanks to the failing Michael Cinimo’s Heavens Gates. I think this is what pushed them to include what was fashionable then when it came to music. In any case a decade besieged with sequels expecting anything good would have been a difficult thing! Let’s be grateful for a handful of films that turned out to be great movies for what’d film viewing be without a Raging Bull (1980), The Shining (1985), Amadeus (1984) and The Blade Runner (1982).
Image: www.amazon.com
The story might come across as very straight and simple but in the hands of Friedkin it is anything but that. A cop loses his partner while pursuing a master counterfeiter and his one point short-term aim in life is to put the guy in jail. He and his new partner approach the fraudster with a job but can’t raise the advance needed to get the task going. The cops end up robbing a diamond dealer who eventually dies in the bargain. They soon learn that the dealer was actually an undercover cop. The guilt starts taking its toll on one of the cops but the other one couldn’t care less for he is only interested in avenging his partner’s death. At the trade off things go bad and everyone cops it barring the guilt-ridden cop. If you thought the seemingly upright police officer would change his ways, you couldn’t be more wrong. He carries on as if nothing ever happened and moreover he becomes someone who, after seeing it all, doesn’t really mind pushing the limits.
The film stands and delivers even after two decades and you have to see the chase scene here to believe that Friedkin could better the one from The French Connection. Shot in gang territory the film successfully depicts Los Angeles as never before. So much so that a lot of John Woo films that eventually inspired Tarantino might have taken in a lot from this underrated Friedkin gem. It’s the then contemporary music of Wang Chung that fails To Live and Die in LA. According to film trivia Friedkin zeroed in on them as he felt that the band stood out from the rest of contemporary music! There’s even a title track with cheesy vocals. Something that Friedkin had specially instructed to avoid but changed his mind when he heard the track!
The second example would be Michael Mann’s Manhunter. A fantastic film that still beats the crap out of the Brett Ratner version any day of the week; only the music sounds dated. Even the soundtracks of Top Gun, Beverly Hills Cop soundtrack seems jarring today. Many would consider the soundtrack of the cult classic The Blade Runner by Vangelies a mismatch today.
A majority of the filmmakers who were calling the shots in the 1980’s were the hot shots of 1970’s whose clout was lessening thanks to the failing Michael Cinimo’s Heavens Gates. I think this is what pushed them to include what was fashionable then when it came to music. In any case a decade besieged with sequels expecting anything good would have been a difficult thing! Let’s be grateful for a handful of films that turned out to be great movies for what’d film viewing be without a Raging Bull (1980), The Shining (1985), Amadeus (1984) and The Blade Runner (1982).
Image: www.amazon.com
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