It's at least watchable. Sean Penn holds one's interest with his muscles, swagger, and sweet grin, and Christopher Walken is good, though his charisma isn't as convincing as his malevolence. But, finally, the hole-ridden plot asks too much even of a skillful actor such as Penn. The movie announces itself as based on a true incident,but a plot must make sense on its own terms.
The father's gang, one of whom is played by the magnificent David Strathairn (wasted here), look as though they've just stepped out of the movie Deliverance. Oh, these bad hillbillies! But the setting, after about an hour, is established as Pennsylvania. Having lived in rural Pennsylvania for several decades, I'm more than willing to grant that there are rough characters lurking there, but they just don't look like these guys. Nor sound like them. Apparently there was no dialect coach, and, left to themselves, the actors replicated the inflections of mobsters in the Mafia movies so popular in the 80s.
The landscape, meant to be somewhere in Pennsylvania, is striking, but similarly out of kilter. An Amish buggy suddenly appears at one point, which suggests southeastern or central Pennsylvania, but the bluffs along the river are too white, the mountains in the distance a little too pointy, not the long ridges that stride northeasterly across Pennsylvania. If you can stand more of the monotonous music and can wait through the credits, you see that the film was in fact made in Tennessee--I guess for the same reason that a box of Kellogg's Corn Flakes appears on a kitchen table at one point, occupying the center of the screen: a deal was cut by the producers.
The women in the movie, other than the girlfriend, played by Mary Stuart Masterson, are little more than ghosts. They seldom speak or do anything other than sweep the floor. Well, there's one stripper.
The movie isn't all bad. Walken, a pro, makes you believe in pure malice, and it's interesting to see the young Sean Penn learning (rather painfully) his craft.
The father's gang, one of whom is played by the magnificent David Strathairn (wasted here), look as though they've just stepped out of the movie Deliverance. Oh, these bad hillbillies! But the setting, after about an hour, is established as Pennsylvania. Having lived in rural Pennsylvania for several decades, I'm more than willing to grant that there are rough characters lurking there, but they just don't look like these guys. Nor sound like them. Apparently there was no dialect coach, and, left to themselves, the actors replicated the inflections of mobsters in the Mafia movies so popular in the 80s.
The landscape, meant to be somewhere in Pennsylvania, is striking, but similarly out of kilter. An Amish buggy suddenly appears at one point, which suggests southeastern or central Pennsylvania, but the bluffs along the river are too white, the mountains in the distance a little too pointy, not the long ridges that stride northeasterly across Pennsylvania. If you can stand more of the monotonous music and can wait through the credits, you see that the film was in fact made in Tennessee--I guess for the same reason that a box of Kellogg's Corn Flakes appears on a kitchen table at one point, occupying the center of the screen: a deal was cut by the producers.
The women in the movie, other than the girlfriend, played by Mary Stuart Masterson, are little more than ghosts. They seldom speak or do anything other than sweep the floor. Well, there's one stripper.
The movie isn't all bad. Walken, a pro, makes you believe in pure malice, and it's interesting to see the young Sean Penn learning (rather painfully) his craft.