Badlands

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Badlands

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Badlands

Martin Sheen, Ramon Bieri, Sissy Spacek, Warren Oates

Still one of American cinema's most powerful, daring filmmaking debuts, Terrence Malick's Badlands is a quirky, visionary psychological and social enigma masquerading as a simple lovers-on-the-...( read more  read more... )lam flick. Inspired by the 1958 murders in the cold, stark badlands of South Dakota by Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate, the film's plot, on the surface, is similar to that of other killing-couple films, like Bonnie and Clyde and Gun Crazy. Martin Sheen, in an understated, sophisticated performance, plays the strange James Dean-like social outcast who falls in love with the naïve Sissy Spacek--and then kills her father when he comes between them. The two flee like animals to the wilderness, until the police arrive and the killing spree begins.

What sets the film apart from others of its genre is Malick's complicated approach. Gorgeous, impenetrable images contrast sharply with Spacek's nostalgically artless narration, serving as ironic counterpoints, blurring concrete meaning, and stressing that nothing this horrific is simple. Malick observes, rather than analyzes, the couple in a manner as detached and apathetic as the couple's shocking actions. No judgment or definitive motivations are offered, though Malick's empathy often leans toward his senseless protagonists, rather than the star-struck society that makes killers famous. Compared with the interchangeable uniform cops who hunt them and the film's other nameless characters stuck in suburban banality, the couple are presented like tarnished, warped and frustrated results of squelched individuality.

Badlands, on one level, views America's suffocating homogeneity and, conversely, its continued obsession with celebrities (individuals considered different but adored) as hypocritical. Ambiguous and bold, the movie hints that society may be as guilty as the killers. --Dave McCoy

Id: 10906419

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Badlands Recent Reviews
  • SirPant
    October 1, 2009
    SirPant
    This is Malick at his best. Often copied (True Romance) but never matched. This is an American classic, not to be missed!
  • DrZeek
    June 21, 2009
    DrZeek
    Holly Sargis: At this moment, I didn't feel shame or fear, but just kind of blah, like when you're sitting there and all the water's run out of the bathtub.

    A Terrence Malick film about a couple on the run for the majority of the film. The story is based on a real life killer c...( read more)ouple, but this film is not focused on what drives them to murder, it is more about people stuck in a banal life and taking a new turn. However, it combines a sense of not caring on one side and developing a new level of social outcast on another.

    Martin Sheen stars as Kit, a young man who is from the wrong side of the tracks, working as a garbage man. Kit one day sees Holly, played by Sissy Spacek and immediately strikes up a relationship with her. Holly keeps this from her father, played by Warren Oates, but eventually he finds out and bans Holly from seeing Kit. In response, Kit kills Holly's father, and the two go on the run. At first they stick to the woods, but after Kit murders some bounty hunters who were after them, the two drive into the great plains, spending their time together, being known as the most dangerous people out in the open.

    This was a very interesting film and I credit it to Martin Sheen. He underplays his role, never having much of an outburst in emotion and despite seeming to be trigger happy, his justification is credible to himself in its own sort of way. He also has a quiet cool about him and its no coincidence that he is said to resemble James Dean on more than one occasion.

    I wasn't a big fan of Spacek in this film. Her character was too underplayed for me. I understand that it is part of the character, but her reaction in many situations is way too passive and her personality doesn't seem to justify it. However, her narration is effective.

    Unlike the more recent Malick films that are very natural, quiet, and long, this film is paced fairly evenly, has an engaging story, with two actors working well off each other. It is also not very long. These aspects all add to a film that is quite good looking, even with its violence. Malick has a way of shooting the outdoors that makes everything seem calming in a way.

    It was also nice to see how one of my favorite films, True Romance, was clearly influenced by this movie. In terms of its score, narration, and two lovers on the run plot-line, its clear that Tarantino is an admirer of this film as well.

    A very interesting and engaging film, with a great performance by Sheen.

    Holly Sargis: He needed me now more than ever, but something had come between us. I'd stopped even paying attention to him. Instead I sat in the car and read a map and spelled out entire sentences with my tongue on the roof of mouth where nobody could read them.
  • flixsterman
    May 10, 2009
    flixsterman
    Terrence Malick has crafted two characters that treat robbery and murder as incidental mishaps and necessities. Martin Sheen's character is sociopathic and cold-blooded but yet still likeable. Sissy Spacek, as his young accomplice, is fully aware of his atrocities, yet she reta...( read more)ins her innocent charm. This bizarre intermingling of murder and manners, of the brutal and the benign, is why Badlands is unnerving and unforgettable.
  • hobster1
    June 27, 2008
    hobster1
    Terrence Malick's best film.
  • shortcartoonist
    June 12, 2008
    shortcartoonist
    Wildly offsetting, wildly captivating, and wild in its own substance, Badlands is an inventive and thoughtful picture that holds motion in every department. Sheen's 'Dean-esque' portrayal supplements the wondrous visuals laden before the up-beat, jittering sound score. The film i...( read more)s not so much a tale of morals, but more a look into the psyche and the cause of actions, all the while probing the role of the celebrity and the role of wealth in a growing society.
  • rajiv23gooners
    November 14, 2009
    rajiv23gooners
    this is for me the worst malick's film, but you know, when i said malick's worst, it could be someone's masterpiece, this is actually a really good film, an accomplished one, but my problem is just as simply as this film is different from other malick's film, this is not as insig...( read more)htful as the thin red line, not as beautiful as days of heaven, and not as epic as the new world, but considering this is his debut, i forgive him, at least this film showed malick's potential, with that interesting narration, which later become malick's trademark.,
    the important things from this movie are, this movie inspires many modern movies like natural born killer, and true romance (quite big inspiration for tarantino, eh?), and Kit Carruthers could be one of the most interesting characters in cinema..
  • Steel20
    October 26, 2009
    Steel20
    This movie was daring and made to stand the test of time and that it has accomplished. The rebel without a cause was one of the reasons this movie was put out there. He had nowhere to fit in and started out a path of his own, only wanting to be remembered. A twisted yet very crea...( read more)tive film.
  • wrongrobot
    October 24, 2009
    wrongrobot
    i love this film, its so clever
  • jturner083
    October 15, 2009
    jturner083
    A true telling of the Stark weather serial killings in the Dakotas. Violent and suspenseful with young Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek. They were young and in love; she was reckless and slutty, he was a murdering psychopath. Ah, romantic.
  • AD917
    September 2, 2009
    AD917
    Amazing performances from Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek, and some really beautiful cinematography. A good portion of Tarantino?s script for ?True Romance? was obviously inspired by (or a rip off of) this movie. The theme songs/scores are even almost identical.
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