At Close Range | Alan Autry, R.D. Call

At Close Range | Alan Autry, R.D. Call | "Is this the family gun, dad?" Hidden '80's Genre Gem

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At Close Range

	At Close Range Alan Autry, R.D. Call Vestron average customer review:based on 52 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

One of the overlooked films of the 1980s, perhaps because it is such a downbeat tale of an amoral family. Sean Penn plays a kid whose small-time criminal impulses are stoked to a new level when he falls in with his father (Christopher Walken), a vicious career criminal for whom no problem is so large that it can't be solved by a murder. At first exhilarated by the attention from his father (and the jobs he gives him to do), he gradually catches on to just what a bad guy Dad really is. But when he tries to extricate himself, he discovers that Dad now has him squarely in his sights. Penn is terrific in a role of emotional complexity, while Walken, king of the creeps, is positively frightening as this soft-spoken but highly lethal patriarch. --Marshall Fine

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"Hands Down, A Winner"

"At Close Range" is a classic example of a movie in which all aspects of the filmmaker's art shine; if it isn't already, it should be required viewing for students in film schools. First of all, the Kazan script, which details the growing into manhood of the Sean Penn character, skillfully combines the luridly violent with the ultimately noble, its resolution having Penn, without his becoming a goody two-shoes, credibly endorse the virtues of the civilized over the flashy and brutish.

The color photography, unexpected in a neo-noir film, works remarkably well as it turns out, being consistently beautiful (in the rural landscapes) and imaginative (for example, in its scenes of the gang members marching single file, silhouetted against a dusky sky.) Each image in the film appears to have been composed with great aesthetic care, reminding this viewer of the directorial art of such a master as William Wyler.

The acting in this movie can't be praised highly enough. Christopher Walken, always good as a villian with a sarcastic bent, here outdoes himself as a self-centered father, doing evil not for its own sake, but for HIS own sake. As his initially impressionable and then maturing son, Sean Penn combines a youth's brooding qualities with an astonishing ability as an adult male to scream and even cry on screen, becoming intensely moving in such moments.

As earlier reviewers have insisted, this film deserves to be far better known.

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"Is this the family gun, dad?" Hidden '80's Genre Gem

Somehow this movie vanished without a trace when in came out c.'86, but in my years as a video store clerk in that bygone epoch, whenever i recommended it to customers, they thanked me profusely. This slice of no-hope rural oedipal noir was based on a true story. Sean Penn, barely out of his teens and incendiary, is a bored teen in small-town, depressed Pennsylvania farm country, living with his indolent mom and younger bro (played by real-life bro, the late, lamented Chris Penn). Bored out of his skull, with no prospects, Sean is tantalized by fleeting glimpses of his dad, who abandoned him back in toddlerhood, but who periodically stops by to dispense wads of cash to his estranged wife, keeping contact with his son to a minimum. Dad, as is evident by his clothes, the cash, his swagger and his car, is some kind of rural bandit. And he is played by Christopher Walken, to the absolute hilt, in one of the most menacing, hilarious, kitsch-free depictions of villainy I have ever seen. The narrative proper gets going when Walken takes a fancy to his forgotten son, to the point where he initiates him into his criminal world (which seems to consist mostly of hijacking high-end farm equpiment and selling drugs). Penn, thrilled at the money, excitement, and filial bonding, is swept up into dad's heady orbit...until it begins to dawn on him that there are worse things than being fatherless...like having a dad who is a predatory homicidal maniac.

Magnificent script by Nick Kazan, son of Elia, who in the late '80's early '90's specialized in literate, offbeat true crime stories like this, "Reversal of Fortune," and "Patty Hearst." James Foley ("GlenGary Glen Ross") directs beautifully, paying great attention to the no-hope depressed rural environment. Supporting performances are fabulous, from Tracy Walter's Walter Brennan-like gangster underling, to Crispin Glover and Chris Penn as the stoner kids who get carried away into a life of crime and pay a dear price, to the stunning Mary Stewart Masterson as Sean's tough-as-nails tomboy girlfriend. Penn himself is his usual smoldering self, but it is Walken who makes this a must-see; too often self-parodic, here is is absolutely believable, from his cocksure swagger, to his peculiar but convincing Appalachian accent ("a little Elvis, a little Muhammed Ali," he explained in an interview), to his habit of smiling sweetly to himself when he kills people. The story of a man who discovers the joys of fatherhood belatedly, until it gets in the way of what really matters to him, the story of a fatherless boy whose belated reunion with his father goes from rapture to nightmare: this is not merely a true-crime movie, but an archtypal tragedy, and everyone involved should take a bow -- even Madonna, then in her Penn-days, who delivers a terrific title song with the downbeat "Live to Tell."

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Excellent drama based on true story

This movie is a great one and of course the acting is superb. Sean Penn never lets you down! The fact that it is based on a true story makes it all the more gripping.

The Family Business of Crime

This movie is based on the true events of a crime family from Pennsylvania. Sean Penn and Christopher Walken are both outstanding in this film. If I remember correctly, Sean Penn was married to Madonna during the time this was filmed. Madonna actually has a song that plays on the soundtrack to this film. I had never heard of the story behind this movie until the movie itself came out. Penn's character seeks the approval of his father (Walken) by following in his father's footsteps. The family business is burglary, and business is good. Greed eventually takes over and things start to fall apart for everyone in the film. Sometimes films based on true events fall short on exitement, but this one delivers the goods. Great film.

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