Live and Die in East LA
After an E.R. doctor treats an injured boy, he is pulled into the world of gangs and street violence in the underbelly of Los Angeles.
Excerpt
As long as the story is solid, the pacing is well managed and everything makes sense, it’s easy to rate an independent film. Unfortunately, this film failed to deliver on most of these metrics, but… I still liked it?
Follow the Leader
Joining a gang seems like a lot of effort for little reward; still, many are still drawn to the allure of comraderie and illegal group activity and Live and Die in East LA is poised to act as both an homage and a deterrent. I love the renegade style of indie film and I’m happy to give a lot of grace to productions that can’t always deliver award winning performances or stellar special effects. As long as the story is solid, the pacing is well managed and everything makes sense, it’s easy to rate an independent film. Unfortunately, this film failed to deliver on most of these metrics, but… I still liked it?
Maybe it’s the potential and maybe it’s the collaboration with Homeboy Industries and GRYD (Gang Reduction & Youth Development) – two organizations looking to end gang violence in Los Angeles. Maybe it’s the authentic ex-gang members who are being so vulnerable and open with their stories, or maybe it’s the inventive animated interstitials that condemn selfishness and backstabbing through the metaphorical tale of an ambitious caterpillar (animated by the talented Mio Yamanaka)?
Regardless of what it is that has me rooting for this film, I’m forced to consider that if the goal of the film is to deter young men from joining gangs and engaging in gang violence; I don’t know that Live and Die in East LA is successful in this endeavor.
The film opens with a parable of a traveling caterpillar. She’s searching for a place to spin her cocoon and encounters many crossroads on her way. As she considers each ethical choice, we’re transported to the real world. After a quick stop to visit Anita (Anita Korosi) we then head to East LA to meet two brothers, the older of which is working on a paper for school. He decides he wants to go show his dad Carlos (Michael Flores), but Dad is otherwise occupied collecting money from Messy Sanchez (Cesar Garcia). Sanchez is fidgety and insists his boss Tony (Robert LaSardo) is a businessman and everything is sound.
Everything turns out to not be sound as the payment is short a good chunk of change. Sanchez pleads for his life and it’s almost of no use when older brother Daniel (Daniel Hovey) walks in asking his dad to look at his paper. Guns go down and Carlos tells Sanchez it’s his lucky day and allows him to leave. Instead of just tucking tail and running, he instead decides to run Daniel over with his car. It’s a wild decision that I still don’t fully understand, but this starts a series of events that lead Carlos to Attila (Attila Korosi), a doctor at a local hospital.
We meet Attila when he’s looking at a film project he’s working on with Ishaan (Ishaan Bahri). It’s such an LA thing and really did make me smile to see them talking production in the waiting area of the clinic. Attila gets distracted by a code-blue and runs to try and save Daniel’s life. Carlos tells Attila that if he needs anything… anything, all he has to do is call. Attila nods, grfateful yet unbothered and goes about his day.
Timey Wimey
This is when we get our “what if?” and the storyline that happens next is one in which Carlos and Attila don’t meet. This is where the butterfly effect motif started to show signs of fraying. Sanchez doesn’t run Daniel over and the boy is alive and well. He reads his paper at school where we see that Ishaan is his teacher. Ishaan sees a lot of potential in Daniel and is happy to encourage him, telling him about the tenacity of a caterpillar that just happens to be on the grounds. As viewers we’re happy to see him alive and now with the understanding that Ishaan is connected to the story, not Attila. However two things happen that unravel everything quickly. 1) Sanchez apparently comes back after being mercifully released and manages to steal money from Carlos before being betrayed by Tony. 2) After Anita gets into legal trouble and has to pay a $250k fine, Ishaan suggests that he and Attila go to Tony with little to no explanation of how they’re connected.
So many unfortunate choices get made not only by our cast of players, but also by that danged caterpillar! Of course the story ends in tragedy, but then there’s another butterfly effect that causes a rewind. This is when I started to go crazy. They rewind and say, “let’s just go, let’s leave”, but they end up in the same situation anyway! And although the next series of events is more pleasing, it’s also completely confusing. The caterpillar story ends satisfactorily but it feels like the ambition of the director ended creating a hurricane he couldn’t control.
A Spoonful of Sugar
The effects were really great! The violence was very gritty and visceral and maybe a touch too realistic. In one scene a man’s arm gets hacked for just a hair past too long. Acting wise, the weak links are the Korosi siblings and Ishaan. Carlos and Tony (as insane as he was) were really great. There were also some really interesting character moments. One homie, lamenting the death of his foo, improvises a song in memoriam. Another scene shows the bartender feeding an injured guest some homemade elixir before sending him off to the company doctor. Scenes like this are great world-building but ultimately get hampered by uninventive scenes of casual stupidity. In one a guy finds a glass bottle to break over someone else’s head… in the bathroom? Another shows that a character has zero peripheral vision or hearing when large, loud men are able to sneak around him unnoticed.
I think what’s most frustrating is there is a really cool movie in there if you strip out the excess and tie the storyline to the interstitials about the caterpillar. Sanchez was a great character, but there’s no need to have him and Sado (Richard Cabral), one of Tony’s intense henchmen. There needed to be a one to one for each character with losses on both sides if your goal is to show the folly of ganglife. If the split was hinged on what happens if Daniel gets hit or doesn’t, this creates stakes that only get raised during the film. Events near the end of the film hinge on Daniel’s presence, but in one he’s coincidentally gone and the other he’s there. This complicates what should be a simple story and turns it from a film about choices and consequences to happenstance and luck.
Los Angeles City and County recognized this film for its life-saving community impact, but at the end of the day I can’t say that this film is focused enough to deter anyone from wanting to join a gang. Some of the sequences kind of glamorized the culture. Yes, there were some negative consequences, but there were a lot of positives too. All that said, it’s nice to see a film that was not only shot in LA, but explores more of LA than Hollywood and Beverly Hills. From clandestine meetings under the aqueducts to late night taco stands, Live and Die in East LA, pays a lot of respect to the great city of Los Angeles. I just wish it took the same care with its own plot.
Score: 5/10
Live and Die in East LA was released on DVD September 8, 2026.