not only does this film have crazy action, but it also has some really interesting cases of associative montage that i was quite surprised to see in a film of this sort. there’s one seen of willem dafoe fucking his gf: the first shot, of only a few seconds, has video grain and a high angle, replicating surveillance video footage. cut to dafoe looking around wildly, paranoid. there’s no diegetic source of the surveillance footage: it’s a stylistic choice friedkin made that gets us into the character’s head.
an interesting combination of friedkin’s gritty, neorealist filmmaking style with 80s LA aesthetic. the soundtrack is extremely heavy on the synth bass; the title card is neon green and pink; the credits are in a curly California font. the narrative is extremely, extremely noir, which i adored quite a lot. the ending especially (minus the stinger) sinks the landing so deliciously. incredibly bleak, violent, hopeless, all of which i loved. perhaps most socially critical was the moment between the main guy’s partner and his “love interest,” the informant character, when the partner embraces his fallen position and steps in to keep the cycle of corruption and exploitation going. the performances in this are really, really good. obviously dafoe stands out to me, but the two main cop characters are wonderfully portrayed as well.
one thing i will say is that i feel like i am chasing something in the “neo-noir” genre that is just a bit more complicated, that addresses itself to the genre. it seems like a lot of neo-noir is content to take the conventions of the genre, and bring them to a heightened level that would not have been socially or cinematically possible in the 40s: more sex, violence, gore, action, corruption, drugs, blahblah…i’m chasing the high of The Big Lebowski and Under the Silver Lake. “postmodern-noir.” this was really good. not much of a thinker, but good action, style, and noir atmosphere.