From Amazon.com
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
Review
A superbly written and acted film based loosely on real-life events, this intense crime drama is a major artistic success for all concerned, especially stars Christopher Walken and Sean Penn in two of their best roles, as well as screenwriter Nicholas Kazan and director James Foley. The latter's style might strike some viewers as too cool, remote, or austere, but this nearly documentary-like approach allows the cast room to stretch and improvise while slyly emphasizing the picture's similarity to the classic In Cold Blood (1967). However, the film is definitely not a docudrama, the director reminding viewers of the emotionally potent subtext with subtle, symbolic transitions in which such incongruous, attention-getting images as bound chicken talons or singing lips suddenly appear. His is the art of transcending the establishing shot by going for something a little more penetrating. Walken and Penn are marvels of nuance employed in the arts of linguistic inflection and the physicality of inhabiting a character with one's entire body, from the way they laugh to how they walk. (Just watch Penn as he shifts from a cocky swagger that emanates down from his shoulders, moving like nothing so much as a suit buoyed by a massive hanger, to a defeated, slump-shouldered shuffle by the finale). Kazan goes light on dialogue but what's there is charged with unspoken meaning, while visual cues and arresting images tell the story. All of this shows the mark of a great screenwriter enjoying a meeting of the minds with a director who gets it. At Close Range (1986) is one of the best examples of its genre from the 1980s. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide
DVD ~ Sean Penn
DVD ~ Eric Roberts
DVD ~ Christopher Walken
DVD ~ Matt Dillon
DVD ~ Matt Dillon
