loading...
Badlands
1973
Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek are Kit and Holly in this incredible debut feature film from elusive writer/director Terrence Malick. South Dakota, 1959. Kit and Holly are adrift in a double fantasy of crime and punishment, a headlong flight from nowhere, to nowhere. They're playing make-believe but the bullets are real. And the .. Read more
| Starring | Martin Sheen, Sissy Spacek, Ramon Bieri, Warren Oates |
|---|---|
| Director | Terrence Malick |
| Genres | Action/Adventure, Thriller |
loading...
Badlands
Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek are Kit and Holly in this incredible debut feature film from elusive writer/director Terrence Malick. South Dakota, 1959. Kit and Holly are adrift in a double fantasy of crime and punishment, a headlong flight from nowhere, to nowhere. They're playing make-believe but the bullets are real. And the bloodshed is very real. Badlands was inspired by true events, the plot and lead characters of Kit and Holly are based on Charles Starkweather and Caril Fugate, who in 1958 embarked on a murder spree that horrified the country.
| Starring | Martin Sheen, Sissy Spacek, Ramon Bieri, Warren Oates |
|---|---|
| Director | Terrence Malick |
| Studio | WARNER HOME VIDEO |
| Run time | DVD: 1 hr 30 mins |
| Certificate | |
| Genres | Action/Adventure, Thriller |
| Language | English |
| Released | DVD: 26 May 2003 Production year: 1973 |
| Format | DVD |
-
Critics' reviews (2)
View all -
This crime drama from reclusive director Terrence Malick was the Natural Born Killers of its day. In a moodily disturbing account of the infamous Charlie Starkweather murders in the 1950s, Martin Sheen plays the alienated killer on a psychopathic rampage through the American Midwest, accompanied by his loyal teenage girlfriend, Sissy Spacek. Both leads are highly effective as the icy duo caught up in a series of horrific events that are dazzlingly and daringly depicted by Malick. Yet, it's the matter-of-fact dreamy approach, defying convention by leaving loose ends, that makes this a truly scary experience.
-
One of the most impressive directorial debuts ever. On the surface, it's merely another rural-gangster movie in the... read more on Time Out
-
Most helpful member's review
View all -
20 out of 23 people found this review helpful
Shooting stars
Watching this film, you wonder what the protagonists would make of it all if they could watch themselves through our eyes. Holly and Kit are, after all, resolutely self-obsessed, and obsessed by the Hollywood stars that perhaps they imagine themselves to be (and as Sissey Spacek and Martin Sheen, would of course become). They are bored by small-town life, social rules, and pretty much everything except killing, driving and their reflection in each others eyes. Sex would just get in the way, and they make sure it never does.
Would they notice Terence Malick’s ability to craft unexpected, wholly original, image after image, like some holiday scrapbook from a country that no-one had ever visited? Would these pictures chime with Holly’s adolescent diary as she read it aloud to us, a fumbling attempt at articulacy that she and Kit never try to reproduce with each other? How would Kit regard himself choosing the right hat for his showdown with the Law? Would they wonder what made them go on such an unmotivated killing spree, would they wonder at just how fascinating the two of them could be?
I guess no matter what they saw, they wouldn’t say a word. It takes a rare talent to know how to be quiet, loudly. -
Most recent members' review
View all -
4 out of 6 people found this review helpful
Not for us
Found this film slow and boring. Martin Sheen had potential but failed to bring the character alive. Not a lot more to say really, it's either a love it or hate it film and we hated it!
-
News and features
View all -
More like this
View allShowing 1 to 4 of 20
Related user collection
They Shoot Pictures, Don't They Greatest 1000 Films... (321)
79.2% from 13 members
by:
Tolis
from Kent
