At Close Range is a strangely conventional film made in an unconventional way and suffering at bit from its 80s heritage. It stars a young Sean Penn following his father’s criminal life for a while before moving away from it again. It both feels like an indie movie and a Brat Pack movie at the same time, due to its unusual filmmaking choices and the cast of young actors that were or would become famous. It is a bit long and not very exciting most of the time, but it has a certain appeal that gets stronger as the movie progresses. It doesn’t feel like a typical crime movie, more like a meditation exercise, many scenes of people staring and being silent, but it’s not necessarily boring. It is not a bad movie at all, even if I make it sound this way, it’s well filmed with an interesting use of light and shadows. I didn’t like the overly tropy opening scene, in which we learn just how cool of a character Sean Penn is and how fast the right girl falls for him. But it gets much better after that, apart from the ending (see below). The music is as 80s-synthie-bad as possible, though. The way it switches between fascinating and contrived is very symptomatic for James Foley’s future career as a director (who would follow this movie with the Madonna-vehicle Who's That Girl? and some years later would direct the classic Glengarry Glen Ross).