This movie is about criminals, but it is a more realistic portrayal than many of the more famous movies in which the action and characters are comically drawn (such as spaghetti crime movies),and the events, although never fully explained, have a ring of logic about them, and don't lose the viewer (such as the Godfather movies do). Walken portrays a very vicious criminal with a true criminal mind. Penn plays his son, who tries crime out for a living, and brings some of his friends into the business with him. Like all modern gangster movies, what they actually do is never explained, but the explanation of each person's part is better understood by the viewer than most movies of this genre. Walken is much like the criminal who really exists in our country. He can come across as fairly glib, but never hesitates to commit senseless acts of horror. He gives the excuse early on that he has some reason. The first real horrible act is murdering a man he claims is a snitch. But after a while, it is evident he just concocts these reasons to perform murders. As in real life, the criminals always find easy prey and then call such prey "snitches", in order to rationalize their actions. In real life, the real snitches are left alone and are feared by criminals, because a snitch is just someone who refuses to knuckle under. Meanwhile, the Walken character wipes out those most faithful to him. The most realistic movie of this genre in the last thirty years.

It's 1978 in rural Pennsylvania. Brad Whitewood Jr. (Sean Penn) is an angry young man. He lives with his brother Tommy (Chris Penn),his mother, grandma, and her mother's boyfriend for the last few months. They can best be described as white trash. He has an eye for Terry (Mary Stuart Masterson). His absentee father (Christopher Walken) runs a crime family and drops by to give the family money once in awhile. After a fight with his mother's boyfriend, he goes away to his father.

The first thing one notices is the great Madonna song. It gives the movie the perfect mood. There is a desolation and a sense of impending doom running all throughout this movie. Its bleak tone fits the based-on-a-true-story movie. The acting is close to perfect. The story doesn't have a good flow but its randomness feels like a true story.

Watching a movie like this, you can't help wondering why Christopher Walken didn't get more and better roles. He's got everything an actor ought to have. He's not plain looking. He has a dancer's physical presence, a voice that twists its phonemes into pretzels, and seems able to compellingly interpret any part he's given. The guy just cannot be ignored on screen.

He does his usual superlative job here as a socialized, aggressive type of antisocial personality, convincingly smooth, while he lies his rear end off. "You don't rat on your family," he coaches his two sons (both Penns) as if he were Don Corleone, before he murders one of them and tries to rub out the other. The only time he shows what might be REAL emotion in when Sean Penn confronts him at the climax and comes close to blowing his ears off with a .45 automatic. He gives an extremely good impression of being scared.

Sean Penn is all bulked up here. I'm not sure it fits him too well. He ought to be skinnier. His muscles don't "drape" that well. It's as if he's wearing a "muscle suit" instead of the "fat suits" we've become familiar with. Penn invariably puts a great deal of effort into his performances but, like his muscles, it kind of shows at times. He's good enough here, but is better I think in weasel parts like those in "The Falcon and the Snowman" and "Carlito's Way." Mary Stuart Masterson is a real filly in this movie. She was about 20 when it was shot. She's not staggeringly beautiful, which is all to the good, but in her boyish haircut and with her sinewy limbs and broad forehead she looks as if she's just finished her adolescent growth spurt. There is something coltish about her. She runs about as fast as Penn can run.

There is some evocative photography too. You can just about feel the summer's humidity and hear the locusts buzzing.

Landscape aside, the lifestyle we see on screen is pretty lousy, and in fact the movie starts off in a rather leisurely manner. Characters don't rush through their dialog. They pause between statements, the way people do naturally. But (expletive deleted),how dull things are! They sit around and drink beer and watch TV and never talk. Walken is about the only animated person around. No wonder his boys idolize him.

But it's a small life. You know the kind of heavies that Joe Don Baker as Buford Pusser fought in "Walking Tall"? The guys that hung out in a saloon and ran some hookers and cheated customers -- that kind of small-time stuff? Those seem to be the offenses that Walken and his cronies commit, so it comes as a big surprise when the FBI enters the scene and starts passing out subpoenas. For heisting tractors? And the murders that follow are even more of a surprise. I missed the beginning of the movie so maybe that accounts for the incongruity.

At any rate, though the film has its longeurs, a good deal of attention has gone into putting this production together. It isn't overburdened with a loud score. There are no exploding fireballs. The violence, at least in the print I saw, was muted. The murders are quick and, with one exception, bloodless. The director has passed up a chance to cheapen a rape scene by showing us a lot of skin. Instead, he cuts as soon as we've got the idea.

Overall, a pretty good job, a lot better than most of the junk on screen these days.