At Close Range

At Close Range

This is a brutal, violent story of a boy’s need for a father who hates him and would kill his son if necessary. It’s also a story with passages of love and adventure and joy, as an adolescent grows up in the hills of rural Pennsylvania. The way these two sides of the story come together creates a tragedy that reminds me of myth, of those ancient tales about children betrayed by their parents. And yet “At Close Range” is based on fact. It happened in 1978.

Sean Penn stars as Brad Whitewood Jr., probably the best among the younger actors. He lives with his divorced mother and grandmother and half brother in squalor, watching TV all day long out of sheer boredom. Now and then his father, Brad Sr., will appear out of nowhere and throw some money on the table. Then he drives away in a fast car with a good-looking girl at his side. The kid would like to taste some of that life for himself; it looks better than what he’s got.

The father is played by Christopher Walken in one of the great hateful performances of recent years. Walken is an odd actor who’s hard to pin down; you have to see him as Mike Wallace or Iggy Pop to understand how strange he can be. But when he gets the right role (as here and in “The Deer Hunter” and “The Dead Zone”), there isn’t anybody alive who can touch him for cold-blooded terror: He can charm you while twisting your arm off.

In this movie he heads up a gang of professional thieves who’ve been specializing lately in stealing tractors; he likes to play big shot, and sorta enjoys it when his young son starts looking at him with hero worship.

Penn isn’t really criminal material but then neither are many criminals born that way but he’s definitely drifting around on society’s fringes, an outsider even from his own outcast friends. He drifts into his father’s orbit, looking for love and also looking for action. He’s got a gang of his own, and dad assigns the kids to a couple of easy jobs, sort of getting them ready for the big time. But when the big time turns dangerous and it looks like the gang might be busted, Walken is prepared to save his own skin at any cost even if it means betraying his son.

“At Close Range” is not a pleasant movie. Few recent films have painted such a bleak picture of human nature; this one suggests that we’re all locked into our genetic codes and sealed from birth in our doomed chromosomes. The Walken character is ruthless, and most of the other characters are weak or deprived or lacking in vision past their immediate situations. That’s especially true of Brad Jr.’s mother (Millie Perkins) and grandmother (Eileen Ryan), who sit endlessly around the house with their eyes flickering away from every conversation to the TV set.

Only Brad Jr., an extraordinary performance by Sean Penn, has a chance; he’s going to lose everything trying to find himself; his love affair with Mary Stuart Masterson is on a collision course with Brad Sr.; but still he bangs against those walls because somewhere down there inside himself he knows what he’s really up against.

This may be violent and cruel film, but it may serve two good purposes: 1) you may never see another like it; 2) it will certainly win some acting awards at the end of this year, if only because nobody saw these performances coming.

One could be watching two great actors, Penn and Walken, at their best in roles that give them a lot to work with. Another could be witnessing some of the dynamics of a criminal society, some of the forces that push criminals beyond what they want.

Those would be the same dynamics you might see in a great crime film like “In Cold Blood” (1967), where seemingly ordinary people without any moral sense drift into things so awful even they might be appalled.

Watch At Close Range For Free On Gomovies.