At Close Range
Sunday musical excursion #14
The Brat Pack. A group of closely associated actors from the 1980s, most of whom in fact had little to do with each other, aside from appearing sporadically in films with each other, being of a like age and generation. Just exactly who the Brat Pack were and who was not Brat Pack is open to interpretation (especially by Andrew McCarthy). On the whole, I liked the Brat Pack, if only because they’re around the age I am, and the big break-out film for them was St. Elmo’s Fire, which was about freshly graduated university students and came out the year I was a freshly graduated university student.
The group never includes Sean Penn, but to my mind could well have done if only because of the film in which he starred with Christopher Walken as the latter’s brat son: At Close Range. Penn’s late brother Chris played his on-screen brother in the film.
This 1986 movie was a gritty, if not entirely factual, relating of the actual story of a father, Bruce Johnston, and his two sons, who ran a crime syndicate in 1970s Pennsylvania. It’s a film that stops you in your tracks, and Walken and Sean Penn are outstanding in their portrayals of utter, unremitting evil. On a par with Martin Sheen in his breakout movie, Badlands.
When I first saw At Close Range, the musical soundtrack kept reminding me of a haunting theme that sounded almost familiar but which I couldn’t quite grasp. The mystery is unveiled over the closing credits, as Penn’s wife sings her hit song Live To Tell.
You have two links: the official video, and the final court room sequence of the film, which freeze-frames into the final credit roll.
Live To Tell
Written by Madonna and Patrick Leonard
Performed by Madonna
From her 1986 album True Blue
