This is one hell of a true story. Almost too wicked to be true yet true it is. Sean Penn is electric in At Close Range. Penn plays the role with the attitude of a 16 year old, who thinks he's smarter than his dad. He isn't. This becomes obvious about 1/3 thru the film. Christopher Walken is the Main Attraction here make no mistake about that. God he was a perfect choice and I mean perfect. Walken's Big Brad Whitewood is very clever, alluring, charming, and extremely deadly. Penn's Little Brad is like the apple who fell from the tree and rolled down the hill it was on for a quarter of a mile. Walken has a crew that is capable and proficient. Penn has a crew that couldn't even complete high school. Dim bulbs is the term I would use. Walken's men are the suburban versions of Scorsese's Goodfellas. They don't look like thieves, they look like killers who are also professional thieves. At Close Range starts off looking like your basic crime film and then escalates to Walken and his gang committing acts of unspeakable evil that some criminals wouldn't even contemplate. All of these guys were bad bad bad people and whom no one would be sorry to see go to prison for the rest of their lives. Why Walken has not given an Academy Award nomination for this I am still trying to reason out. Perhaps because he was given one for the Deer Hunter I suppose but still one was in order. When you see Walken's face come out of the dark of night into his house's screen door and see Penn, he doesn't show shock. He doesn't show fear. He doesn't even blink. That is the mark of a true master criminal and/or psychotic. He gives him no emotion whatsoever then slowly the Cheshire Cat smile and invites him right in. You can't buy that kind of sinister inhumanity. You have to be born with it or learn it for yourself. And what Big Brad Whitewood did defies belief. Certainly without question one of the best films of 1986.
Review of At Close Range
