The staff at "Variety" gave the film a mixed review and wrote that it was over the top: ""To Live and Die in L.A." looks like a rich man's "Miami Vice". William Friedkin's evident attempt to fashion a West Coast equivalent of his 1971] "The French Connection" is engrossing and diverting enough on a moment-to-moment basis but is overtooled...Friedkin keeps dialog to a minimum, but what conversation there is proves wildly overloaded with streetwise obscenities, so much so that it becomes something of a joke".