| At Close Range | |
| Director: | James Foley |
| Screenplay: | Nicholas Kazan |
| Story: | Elliott Lewitt Nicholas Kazan |
| Music: | Patrick Leonard |
| Cinematography: | Juan Ruiz Anchía |
| Editing: | Howard E. Smith |
| Studio: | Hemdale Film Corporation Cinema '85 |
| Distributor: | Orion Pictures |
| Runtime: | 115 minutes |
| Country: | United States |
| Language: | English |
| Budget: | $6.5 million |
| Gross: | $2.3 million |
At Close Range is a 1986 American neo-noir[1] crime drama film directed by James Foley from a screenplay written by Nicholas Kazan, based on the real life rural Pennsylvania crime family led by Bruce Johnston Sr. which operated during the 1960s and '70s. It stars Sean Penn and Christopher Walken, with Mary Stuart Masterson, Crispin Glover, Tracey Walter, Christopher Penn, Eileen Ryan, David Strathairn and Kiefer Sutherland in supporting roles.
At Close Range was theatrically released by Orion Pictures on April 18, 1986 in the United States. It received mostly positive reviews from critics, with Penn's and Walken's performances receiving particular praise. Despite the warm reviews, the film was not a box office success, grossing a total of $2,347,000 at the North American box office, earning less than its production budget of $6,500,000.
Brad Whitewood Sr. is a career criminal and the leader of his family's gang of rural backwoods criminals. Sr's criminal enterprises intersect when his son, Brad Whitewood Jr., a floundering, out-of-work teenager living in near squalor with his mother, grandmother, brother and mother's boyfriend, comes to stay with him. When his father shows up in a flashy car with a pocket full of $100 bills, Brad Jr. formulates a desire to join his father's life of crime. At first, Jr. starts a gang with his brother, Tommy, fencing their stolen goods through Brad Sr.'s criminal network. As a result of entanglements with his 16-year-old girlfriend, Terry, Brad Jr. seeks full entry into his father's gang, but tries to back out after witnessing a murder. Eventually, Brad Jr's gang is arrested while stealing tractors, and the FBI and local law enforcement attempt to lean on Brad Jr. to get him to turn evidence on his father's gang.
During Brad Jr.'s time in jail, Brad Sr. becomes convinced that Terry is a risk to his activities, thinking that Brad Jr. may confide details to Terry and that she has a big mouth. In an attempt to destroy her relationship with Brad Jr., Brad Sr. rapes Terry after getting her drunk and stoned. After a prison visit where Terry, accompanied by Brad Jr's mother, has a conversation with Brad Jr., it seems that Brad Jr. begins to cooperate with the police. The members of Brad Jr's gang are subpoenaed, and Brad Sr. feels his only recourse is to eliminate them. The gang kills Lucas, Aggie and Tommy. Brad Jr. and Terry plan to flee to Montana, but they're ambushed. Terry is killed, and Brad Jr. is seriously wounded. Brad Jr. confronts his father armed with his father's gun, intending on killing him, but decides instead to cooperate with police.
Ultimately Brad Jr. sits on the witness stand in his father's trial.
The film, while depicting incidents in Chester County and Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, was actually shot in Franklin and Spring Hill, Tennessee.
Music for the film was composed by Patrick Leonard, who had been working on an instrumental theme for Paramount's 1986 film Fire with Fire, and wanted to enlist Madonna for the vocals. Leonard was turned down by Paramount for that project, but Madonna, who was at the time married to Sean Penn, decided that the theme would work well for At Close Range. She wrote the lyrics and presented a demo cassette to director James Foley, and suggested Leonard compose the film's soundtrack. The theme with Madonna's lyrics became the single "Live to Tell". A slower instrumental version opened the film's main title sequence, a harbinger of the end credit sequence, which was accompanied by the version from Madonna's third studio album, True Blue (1986). Versions of the instrumental show up throughout. The instrumental film score by Leonard remained unreleased until a version of the main titles appeared on the Internet in 2014, although the 7" single of "Live to Tell" included a B-side incomplete instrumental version of the score.
The music featuring in the film included a number of popular songs from the late 1970s, including "Miss You" by The Rolling Stones, "Boogie Oogie Oogie" by A Taste of Honey, as well as a number of arrangements featuring LeRoux.
The film was not profitable at the box office during its theatrical run. It grossed a total of $2,347,000 at the North American box office during its theatrical run in 83 theaters, earning less than its budget of $6.5 million.
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, At Close Range has an approval rating of 86% based on 22 reviews, with an average score of 7.2/10.[2] Roger Ebert gave it 3½ (out of 4) stars, noting that "few recent films have painted such a bleak picture of human nature". He described Sean Penn as "probably the best of the younger actors", while lauding Christopher Walken's "hateful" performance.[3]