Badlands (1973)

Featured Audience Ratings

• Dan S

  
  A beautiful, disturbing romanticized version of violence run amok against the beautiful landscape of the 1950's midwest, where a lowlife (Martin Sheen) falls for a teenager (Sissy Spacek), and the two begin a "Bonnie and Clyde"-esque rampage across the country. While… More
  A beautiful, disturbing romanticized version of violence run amok against the beautiful landscape of the 1950's midwest, where a lowlife (Martin Sheen) falls for a teenager (Sissy Spacek), and the two begin a "Bonnie and Clyde"-esque rampage across the country. While the movie contains an annoying amount of voiceover on Spacek's, as well as instances where you feel director Terrence Malick might be in awe of these two twisted people, the beautiful cinematography, well-developed story, and realistically captured conclusion help usher this film home. Sheen is fabulous in a role carved strictly for him, and you can tell he has fun sporting his James Dean like looks and combining it with a Clyde Barrow type fearlessness. Spacek is wonderful in the role of the smitten but thoughtful and poetic female role, and her character's regression from an innocent, morally upright young lady to a callous, loyal companion is handed with meticulous, adept care. This film never approaches masterpiece territory like some believe it is, as I do not feel Malick allowed enough room for his actors to develop their characters as best they could given the heavy voiceover his screenplay relies on, but this is still a fine, wonderful looking film deserving a view thanks to two fantastic performances and a look into how we as a country treat serial killers like the celebrities and cult heroes they really aren't.

• Tsubaki S

  
  I guess i don't get it, because this felt like a long tedious and very very pointless waste of time. This is suppose to be a "deep" metaphor for something, and the movie avoids giving motivations to the characters because that's for simple-minded audiences and… More
  I guess i don't get it, because this felt like a long tedious and very very pointless waste of time. This is suppose to be a "deep" metaphor for something, and the movie avoids giving motivations to the characters because that's for simple-minded audiences and i'm a poor fool for demanding those trivial and superficial details. I guess this super mysterious mantra of the movie might explain why everyone whispers their dialogues. Even with all the volume up i still couldn't understand some of the dialogues. So, i'm off to being a complete fool and watch hollow empty movies, watching long takes of dusty roads is just way above me.

• Chris W

  
  This is the wonderful and fascinating debut film of one of the most interesting and talented, yet secretive and least prolific filmmakers out there, Terrence Malick. The story, inspired by the real life case of Charles Starkweather, follows that of Kit Carruthers, a young aimless… More
  This is the wonderful and fascinating debut film of one of the most interesting and talented, yet secretive and least prolific filmmakers out there, Terrence Malick. The story, inspired by the real life case of Charles Starkweather, follows that of Kit Carruthers, a young aimless greaser who, along with his teenaged schoolgirl lover/companion Holly Sargis, sets out on a murder spree across Montana and South Dakota. The film is pretty light on plot and also a great amount of deppth and insight into the characters and motivations, but even then, it's still a captivating study of how Holly knows that Kit is dangerous and sociopathetic, yet still finds him likeable and views their little odyssey with a great sense of innocence and naivety. It's a curious mix of crime film, road movie, and lighthearted poetic romance. It's not for everyone, but I sure was taken in by it, and I'm not surprised by it's impact and influence. Both Oliver Stone and Tony Scott heavily cribbed from it (for Natural Born Killers and True Romance, respectively), and I'm sure a lot of others have too, but those two stick out the most. The greatest things about this film, other than its curious nature and how interesting it is, are the excellent cinematography and the wonderful performances. Martin Sheen is likeable and seductively malevolent, but very cold blodded and callous. It's a tremendous job. Sissy Spacek though, is the one who really shines here. Her turn as the innocent and naive, but not completely ignorant Holly is a great showcase for her immense talents and low key beauty, both of which are far too often underappreciated. The music, like the visuals, is quite sublime and very catchy. This is a loose and breezy film, yet it never feels shallow or pretentious. I also like how it never overtly condemns or praises the couple or their actions. All in all, I think this is some excellent stuff, and definitely feel you should give it a shot.

• Matheus C

  
  Another masterpiece from the best decade for American cinema featuring amazing performances (Sissy Spacek, I'll always have a soft spot for you).

• familiar s

  
  Decided to watch it (merely, and as I usually do, so excuse me if this is an oft found repetition by me. Oh, and it's bound to happen time and again in the future too.) 'coz it was based on real events. And it was worthwhile. Not a must watch, but serves quite well if you… More
  Decided to watch it (merely, and as I usually do, so excuse me if this is an oft found repetition by me. Oh, and it's bound to happen time and again in the future too.) 'coz it was based on real events. And it was worthwhile. Not a must watch, but serves quite well if you want to *kill* time!!! Holly (a while after Kit shoots his friend Kato): How is he doing? Kit: I got him in the stomach. Holly: Is he upset? Kit: He didn't say anything to me about it.

• Steven C

  
  Terence Malick's "Badlands" is unparalleled when it comes to 1970s crime cinema (hell, even by today's standards it's never been matched). This film is extremely sparse and engrossing. The way Malick subtracts emotion from the world he creates is unique and… More
  Terence Malick's "Badlands" is unparalleled when it comes to 1970s crime cinema (hell, even by today's standards it's never been matched). This film is extremely sparse and engrossing. The way Malick subtracts emotion from the world he creates is unique and unsettling. Coupled with the breathtaking photography and nuanced performances from Martin Sheen and the great Sissy Spacek (who was on a serious role in the 70s, with this, "3 Women" and "Carrie" among others), "Badlands" makes for an absorbing, surreal and unforgettable experience.

• Conner R

  
  It's kind've incredible how influential this has been on modern storytelling. It's easy to see where movies like Natural Born Killers and True Romance especially got their ideas. The movie doesn't attempt to analyze the minds of Kit and Holly; you simply see them… More
  It's kind've incredible how influential this has been on modern storytelling. It's easy to see where movies like Natural Born Killers and True Romance especially got their ideas. The movie doesn't attempt to analyze the minds of Kit and Holly; you simply see them for what they are and make your own judgments. Both Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek deliver great performances here, making these real people and not caricatures of what might have been real people. What I like most about this is that it doesn't glorify nor demonize the characters or the actions. It's a more mature and unsettling way to go about making a movie like this. The music backs this up and further creates a truly unique type of viewing experience. It strays away from fitting into a genre and it doesn't try make a statement about society's downfall. Terrence Malick's vision is clear even in his first attempt. The images we get are so beautiful and often say more than the characters do. If anyone is able to tell an entire story through wide shots, it's Terrence Malick.

• Tim S

  
  Gotta be honest and say that I wasn't really digging this film in the first half hour, but the longer it went on, the more fascinated I was. How difficult is it to tell a story with characters that have no redeemable qualities, yet somehow find them irresistable to watch? The… More
  Gotta be honest and say that I wasn't really digging this film in the first half hour, but the longer it went on, the more fascinated I was. How difficult is it to tell a story with characters that have no redeemable qualities, yet somehow find them irresistable to watch? The voice-over bothers me at times because I think it could have been used a little more sparingly, but overall, I fell in love with this film. A masterpiece to be sure.

• Jennifer D

  
  Strange that it is different and similar all in one. Similar in the western/ isolation feel, different in the character of Kit. Most of Malick's characters are emotionally distant enough to make them hard to connect to, but something about Kit was so off the wall, he made sense.… More
  Strange that it is different and similar all in one. Similar in the western/ isolation feel, different in the character of Kit. Most of Malick's characters are emotionally distant enough to make them hard to connect to, but something about Kit was so off the wall, he made sense. Or maybe I'm a psychopath in the making. And I'm really taking that from the end. I can definitely see the beginnings of Malick's signatures.

• Drew S

  
  Badlands is a daring, full-bodied, bifurcated view of two completely different types of sociopaths: one who places absolutely no value on human life, and one who is so devoid of free will or critical thought that she can be coerced into essentially anything. Martin Sheen and Sissy… More
  Badlands is a daring, full-bodied, bifurcated view of two completely different types of sociopaths: one who places absolutely no value on human life, and one who is so devoid of free will or critical thought that she can be coerced into essentially anything. Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek are perfect here. Sheen emanates the surface level charisma of a emotionally dead man, almost too good-looking and silver-tongued to be resisted. Stronger women than Spacek had probably fallen for his lines in the past. Spacek herself, as poor brain dead Holly, is eerily without texture and for an actress as expressive and intelligent as she, to suddenly shut off all your gifts is a rare and stunning feat. Her narration is passive and objective to the point of sadness; you can't help but wonder how this girl, privy to all of these awful murders (beginning with that of her own father), can remain so unmoved and unshaken by both the deeds themselves and the man committing them. Working in conjunction with our two lead figures is the nature photography, dwelt upon long enough to suggest that the movie is driving at something besides just the human element. Is what they're doing "unnatural?" Or perhaps killing the people who stand in the way of your happiness is closer to natural order than humans have been for a very long time. The notion of primacy is definitely grappled with here, especially in the portion of the film where they establish a base in a secluded forest. They are living in tandem with the wild, the only place that seems hospitable to them anymore. This is a film of quiet audacity, a delightful and subtle psychological study and the inimitable genesis of the serial killer picture. It excels at everything it sets out to do and makes its points with clear, focused, creative cinematic language. It also makes me feel really awful that I dozed through most of The New World. Emphatically recommended, and enough to get me to catch the rest of Terrence Malick's films as soon as possible.

• Randy T

  
  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… More
  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 retains her innocent charm. This bizarre intermingling of murder and manners, of the brutal and the benign, is why <i>Badlands</i> is unnerving and unforgettable.

• Wahida K

  
  He was 25 years old. He combed his hair like James Dean. She was 15. She took music lessons and could twirl a baton. For a while they lived together in a tree house. In 1959, she watched while he killed a lot of people.

• Veronique K

  
  1973 "badlands" is an idyllic film about a young couple whose lives have been led astry by fate's mishappenings...strangely, "badlands" is supposed to be a horrific story about morbid trigger-happy young fellows who have caused the deaths of a couple of… More
  1973 "badlands" is an idyllic film about a young couple whose lives have been led astry by fate's mishappenings...strangely, "badlands" is supposed to be a horrific story about morbid trigger-happy young fellows who have caused the deaths of a couple of innocent people due to momentary spur. but it is not, it's a lyrically romantic tale about a naive but hell-bent first love of a guileless young girl, and the killings done during the movie all seem to be forced by the circumstances despite the girl narrates "he's the most trigger-happy person i've ever seen in my whole life"... now it comes to my routine reciting of the scenario: a plain-jane type of young girl meets a somehow handsome proletariat young man who lives on the wrong side of the track..pleasantly they conversed on the sidewalk, and she knows he's just a petite garbage-man.. but when he requests to see her again, she silently assents...then they see each other more and more in their exclusive retreat..someday the girl's father discover this romance and wanna forbid it, but the boy insists on eloping with the girl so he breaks into the girl's house and starts packing for her...spotted by the girl's father, the boy shoots the father dead after being provoked with criminal charges and the jail sentences. all of a sudden, our anti-hero grabs his girl on the road after setting the house aflame...on the way of their fierce escape, they dwell into a wooden nest by the lake of cottonwoods, dining on raw chickens and fishes like two people in oblivion of civilization until some intrusive bounty-hunter invade into their sanctuary of wilderness..so our anti-hero shoots every single man and keeps on rolling...a spree of killing occur when our protagonist gets anxiety-stricken under the fright of getting caught...at last, the couple set their way within the desolate desert heading the borderline of montana, living in an even more primitively exclusive way like eating grass until one day the girl awakens to realize that this man ain't for her... as for why it's romantic? i suppose, in a way, both characters have a residue of innocence within them, particularly the childlike detachment sissy spacek holds, her character is like that sort of person you feel comfort in getting along with even you may not notice her that much, she seems like that sort of person who won't pass a judgemental contempt to you no matter what you have done, she just quietly does her own thinking without casting a disturbance on anyone like a misanthropic child who just enjoys galloping in the forest on her own...martin sheen, in that stage of his career, appears fresh-lookingly handsome with an undercurrent rebellious temperament, a freewheeling youthful air infuses a light-headed charisma into him..his character is more like wondrous man who accidentally commits a horrible crime but he continues doing it just to see whether he could make a freeman out of himself again by killing off all the witnesses because he's an adventurist who's willing to take all the risks... he's also a romanticist who would stop the cadillac in the middle of barren desert at dark night to dance with his girlfriend along the melody of nat king cole spontaneously flowing from radio, whose ultimate fear of death is just that he doesn't wish to die alone without a girl to scream his name out, who's poetic by soul to be in awe with the grand sight of tangerine sunset with clouds etwined like a gigantic castle....eventually he surrenders to the police under the pretense of flat tire because he doesn't wish to carry on alone with the girl by his side, and also he voluteers to keep the girl's records clean before he's sentenced into the electric chair.. sissy specek's narratives just feel so self-absorbed like someone's reciting her own precious diaries, and the movie takes the woman's visage to move on, and the tone of her voice sounds apathetically introspective..she doesn't seem to be happy or particularly sad, and far from angst-ridden..she simply exists and encounters a gorgeous boy who looks like james dean, who seems to appreciate her as what she is, for that, she's gratified even he's the murderer of her father and he seems to have a hidden violent streak. but strangely she tends to live along with that fine as if her senses are buried into an autistic universe of naive wonderments for the world until she starts to acknowledge the consequences of things at last, so farewell to girlhood and puberty! "badlands" is a subdued treat to the eye for baring the poetic inland america, and middle-east states could be quite enchanting with a simplistic allure which is originally american, and as the audience, i feel the grusome aspect of those spree-killings is shielded out of a vacuum of outlandish reveries within the core of the protagonists' hearts which are filled with every bit of purity and candidness in a society which wouldn't take individuality into its frigid consideration as if life's a fast-living dream and at next moment you die in an electric chair after slumbering over a melodic tune of nat kind cole's..after all, the world ain't for dreamers!

• Anthony L

  
  This is Malick at his best. Often copied (True Romance) but never matched. This is an American classic, not to be missed!

• Aaron N

  
  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… More
  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 couple, 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.

• Mark H

  
  Terrence Malick's best film.

• Kalel J

  
  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.… More
  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 is 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.

• Ken S

  
  Amazing film by Terrance Mallick that is obviously a heavy influence on QT. There are finger prints from this film on Natural Born Killers, Death Proof and especially True Romance

• Lenny M

  
  I forgot I saw this, what an excellent movie. Great filming, landscape, Martin Sheen probably at his most unmainstream BA.

• Tim S

  
  Martin Sheen is great and it's Malick

Read all 20 featured audience ratings