Review of At Close Range (1986) by Johntechwriter — 04 Nov 2018

This little film burns like a fuse from start to finish, thanks to intense performances from Christopher Walken and Sean Penn. Viewers who are not aware of the nature of small-town criminals — a completely different culture from big-city gangstas — might think the characters are overplayed, but they’re not. I know because I grew up in a small town and was a casual friend of several of these characters. I went to school with them and then, before I moved to the big city, knew them as young adults. Three of the guys I knew died violently. I wasn’t involved in their escapades, but they knew I wouldn’t squeal, so we lived and let live.

Like their big-city cousins, these criminals live life on the edge, for the moment. The profits from their criminal activities run second to these guys' craving for the juice — the danger, the excitement of a crime in progress. For guys with a criminal mentality, this high is as strong as any drug. And in the small-town version of criminal life, everybody knows who the local bad guys are. But what can law abiding folks do? They are thrown in together with sociopaths and have to figure out how to get along. When you factor all those elements in, and honestly present them as a drama like this one, the tension comes from several directions at once and builds to a devastating climax. What impressed me most about this film was how it rang true — in how the characters conducted themselves, how they interacted, the crazy thing they did. As in small-town real life, the element that makes this movie's fuse burn the brightest is . . . family. When you mix family with criminality, and throw in some hurt feelings to add spice, you’ve got the ingredients for an exciting, original crime movie.