Rent Badlands (1973)

Badlands - Badlands review by CP Customer

If you liked true romance and natural born killers watch this film Which I assume inspired them both. No feet shots tho :(

True Crime. - Badlands review by Steve

Low budget true crime story about two teenagers who murdered 11 people without apparent motive in 1950s South Dakota. The ages of the characters were raised to accommodate the lead actors, Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek, who are sensational. Terrence Malick's script isn't all that faithful to the exact events; it creates an ambient impression of the killers' altered reality.

The names of Charles Starkweather and Caril Fugate are changed to Kit and Holly. For a while they live in a treehouse and then they shoot a lot of people. Holly's detached narrative voice suggests she has no understanding of the world, and feels zero responsibility for their actions. They are like unsupervised children, making up the rules of their games as they go.

Much of the film is about their accumulating celebrity as they drive through the American heartland and murder mercilessly and impassively. Even the police, who had two men shot down in their pursuit, bask in the reflected notoriety of Kit's fame. The midwest is presented as a wretched wasteland; arid, barren and ugly. The rural poor are depicted as an ignorant people with a moribund culture.

Badlands is one of the key pictures of its decade and has become a model for a crime subgenre; the romance of two inexperienced lovers living on the road, triggering a wave of terror. It's all atmosphere, mostly shot at night with a score of twangy old time rock and roll and Nat King Cole. Everything happens slowly and without apparent purpose. It has been prodigiously ripped off, but this is definitive.

Lost Some its Bite - Badlands review by griggs

Badlands is a stunning debut from Terrence Malick, whose direction turns a grisly story into something strangely poetic. The landscapes, with their breathtaking beauty, almost become the third lead, their vast open plains and dusky skies captured with a painterly eye. Nature isn’t just a backdrop here; it feels like a silent observer, starkly contrasting the chaos Kit and Holly leave in their wake.

Sissy Spacek is mesmerising, her detached, dreamy narration giving Holly an unsettling innocence. Martin Sheen nails Kit’s reckless charm and psychopathic bravado, his fearlessness as chilling as tragic.

That said, Badlands has lost some of its bite over time. Once fresh, its themes of doomed young love and casual violence now feel diluted, especially after True Romance borrowed heavily from it, including its glockenspiel-driven leitmotif. Still, as a tone piece and visual masterpiece, it remains an evocative exploration of beauty and brutality. It lingers, even if it doesn’t shock anymore.