At Close Range

A downbeat tale of brutal family relations, James Foley’s AT CLOSE RANGE is a very tough picture. Violent without being vicarious, this true story is set in a small Pennsylvania town in 1978. It introduces young Brad as just another rather tough kid with an eye for a new girl and fiercely protective of his brother. (Variety)

AT CLOSE RANGE begins conventionally, like one of those S.E. Hinton “young-adult” novels about alienated youth abandoned by everyone over the age of 25. It is, however, something much more interesting – a movie about the casual corruption of a young man by his father in a world totally without values. AT CLOSE RANGE is a strange hybrid of a movie. Mr. Kazan’s screenplay is lean and to the point. Characters are established with the efficiency of an old Warner Brothers program picture.They always say what they mean, to the extent that they know what they mean. The screenplay moves. (Vincent Canby)

35mm-copy from the collection of the Austrian Filmmuseum