At Close Range (1986)....was an especially in-demand VHS tape among the customers in the very first movie-rental store we toiled in.
That's because our little-store-on-the-prairie sat in the bucolic farmlands of southern Chester County, Pennsylvania.....(think of it as a far suburb of Philadelphia)
The people and events depicted in "At Close Range" were thinly fictionalized versions of a real life, murderous Chester County clan, the Johnstons.
This rapacious band of ruthless, rural thieves, led by Bruce Johnston, specialized in stealing heavy farm equipment, but they dabbled in pretty much everything, including drugs and antiques.
Johnston and his senior cohorts even had a junior varsity gang working for them, recruited from his two teenage sons, their friends and one of the sons' girlfriend.
Senior and junior gangs had a falling out, which led to Johnston having the members of the younger gang executed on by one, even his sons. One son managed to survive (unlike his girlfriend) and lived to testify against his father.
With the family renamed as the "Whitewoods", 'At Close Range' unfolds this ugly violent tale in dark, monosyllabic fashion and benefits from its superb casting.......
Who else but Christopher Walken could embody the dead-eyed, cobra-like Patriarch of this miserable clan. Films like this served to solidify his growing reputation as cinema's premiere slow-burn psychopath......('At Close Range' arrived right after Walken's cheerfully comic book turn as the bleached blonde, maniacal Bond villain in "A View To A Kill")
There isn't a moment in the movie when you don't fear for everyone in Walken's orbit here, including his two sons (played perfectly by brothers Sean and Christopher Penn) and the luckless teen girlfriend (a wan and wary Mary Stuart Masterson)
Even though the mood tells you where this story's going from the very beginning, the cast and atmosphere of dread created by director James Foley keeps you in its grip......and fans of up-and-coming actors will get a kick out of spotting, in the J.V. gang, young Kiefer Sutherland and the ever-manic star of 80's horror films, Stephen Geoffreys.
Back in the day, we joked about our Chester County video store customers wanting to check this film out to see if they could identify their stolen tractors......(not likely since this was still decades before digital High Definition came about....)
35 years later, "At Close Range" still remains a grim, powerful little drama. 4 stars (****)
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