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Summary: A poet of American cinema.
Review: Terrence Malick is one of the few poets of American cinema. He turns a tale of loose cannon and his clueless girlfriend driving across the country into pure poetry. Rent it, you will never forget it.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent!
Review: Youngsters Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek kill in the Midwest. Based on a true story, Badlands is an excellent interpretation of being an outsider and floundering in the currents of change that surround and define us.
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Summary: 30 YearsLater...Still Chilling....
Review: This review refers to the Warner Bros DVD edition of "Badlands"...Thirty years ago, young filmakers Terrance Malick(director) and Tak Fujimoto(cinematographer)gave us an advanced preview of their extraordinary talents. And not only that, but the young stars of this film, Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek prove their acting expertise as well. Holly(Spacek), is a naive young girl who becomes enamored by the charismatic but brooding Kit(Sheen). After she is stunned by the brutal murder of her father by the man she loves, she goes on the run with him, and gets caught up in his dark world as he continues on his murder spree. This chilling story was inspired by actual events that occurred in 1958 and Spacek(who also captivatingly narrates), and Sheen capture these troubled youths with perfection and will draw you into every word. Warren Oates turns in a terrific performance as usual, as Holly's father, and of course is not in it nearly long enough. Malick and Fujimoto subtly and artfully create a film, that puts the viewer right there in those "Badlands" of Montana, and that 30 years later will still have you fascinated. The transfer onto DVD is good. There are times when the film shows it's age, but for the most part the clarity and color is fine. The sound remastered in Dolby Digital 5.1, although distinct could still be improved on.The music was outstanding but occassionaly the background noises made the dialouge hard to hear. Neither of these things were enough to take away from the enjoyment or flow of the film, and overall it looks great for a 30 year old film. I would recommend this DVD to anyone who appreciates fine film making. Thanx and enjoy....Laurie
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Summary: A haunting tale of evil and emptiness
Review: Those of us old enough to remember the real-life crime spree of Charles Starkweather and his companion Caril Fugate in 1958 watched the tragedy unfolding while wondering what was going through the minds of these two at the time. Were their victims even people to them, or just opportunities along the way to wherever? Terrence Malick's profoundly accomplished and disturbing film "Badlands" based on the Starkweather-Fugate rampage through South Dakota, takes us inside the minds and souls of Kit, a 25 year old ne'er-do-well, and Holly, a 15 year old on the social margins despite her middle-class lifestyle, and we find that while these two may have had intelligence enough, there was a conspicuous absence where their souls should have been. Holly is a social loner, a wannabe cheerleader, who Kit spies practicing on her lawn. It's love at first sight for him; what is it for her? Love, fascination... we can't tell. There's so much about Holly that's missing. Her mother is dead, her father cares about her but his insensitivity is appalling, and Holly herself doesn't seem connected to anything or anyone. Holly's father knows from the outset that Kit is bad news and he doesn't want him messing with his daughter, so when Kit and Dad go head to head and Dad ends up dead; Holly's reaction shows all the vacuousness of her soulless existence. Is this girl really evil or is she just not there? On the run across the Badlands of South Dakota, Kit and Holly claim more victims. Holly never does the actual killing, but she never tries to intervene. Kit will shoot down anyone with less trepidation than he would step on a bug, but how does Holly feel about this? Can she feel anything? Even her affection for Kit seems lukewarm. Holly just isn't there. Malick does a superb job in showing how the badlands inside Kit and Holly match the Badlands of their environment. These two are a study in nothingness. Kit bounces from job to job with nothing to show for it, and Holly... it's tempting to say she just doesn't give a damn, but we never know where she's coming from. There's a very dark night inside Kit's soul but Holly doesn't even seem to have a soul, and in that sense, she's even more disturbing than he is. The actors are superb. Martin Sheen makes Kit sensual, likeable and at the same time totally amoral; Sissy Spacek is eerily convincing as Holly, and Warren Oates is excellent as her loutish father and the lesser actors. At the end of "Badlands" we realize the futility of the lives of these two young people, and an emptiness inside them that is matches the stark barrenness of the world they live in.
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Summary: A COMPLEX TALE OF EVIL...
Review: This is an amazing directorial debut, as the film works on so many fronts. It is both a love story and a crime drama, with sneak peaks at what makes the two main protagonists tick. It remains for the audience to decide who is the more chilling and disturbed of the two characters, twenty five year old Kit (Martin Sheen) or fifteen year old Holly (Sissy Spacek). This is a film in which two unlikely characters become lovers. Kit, a James Dean-like loser espies the fresh-faced Holly twirling her baton one day and is smitten. He approaches her and, despite her initial reluctance, she begins to see him against her protective father's wishes. Kit is ten years older than Holly, a high school drop out from the wrong side of the tracks, who is unable to maintain a job and appears to have a limited future. He falls in love with Holly and wants her to be his exclusively. Eventually, they become lovers. Holly, a loner who has been raised by her father since her mother died many years ago, lives a middle class, materially comfortable existence. Her father, while he no doubt loves and cares for her, lacks a certain sensitivity. His idea of punishing Holly for disobeying him is to shoot her dog in cold blood. When her fish is dying, his solution is to toss it into the yard while it is still gasping for breath, replacing it with a new fish. Holly's naive, fresh-faced, freckled countenance belies a soul that has atrophied. It is as if Holly were disconnected from her feelings. When Kit tries to talk to the father about his feelings for Holly, he is told in no uncertain terms to hit the road. Kit then decides to leave and take Holly with him. Kit enters Holly's house one day, packing a suitcase of her things in anticipation of their departure, when Holly and her father unexpectedly arrive home. Kit and Holly's father have a confrontation, that ends badly for dear old dad. It is here that the film first signals Holly's detachment as being something other than naivete. Her reaction is mind boggling. It is even more horrific than Kit's reaction. Or is it just shock? You be the judge. They initially live an almost Thoreauesque existence in the woods, living off the land, reading, and spending lots of quality time together, until this, too, begins to pall. Discovery of their idyll by law enforcement officers drives them out, and they begin a chilling killing spree across the Badlands of South Dakota and a life on the lam. While it is Kit who does all the actual killing, it is, to my mind, Holly who is the more complex and frightening character. Her prosaic and banal conversation, as well as a lack of empathy in the most heinous and disturbing of circumstances, is most unsettling. This is reinforced in the film through a voiced-over, almost toneless, detached narration by Holly of the events that took place. It is a masterpiece of point and counterpoint, chilling in its very telling and understated irony. When they are eventually caught, Holly remains impassive, while Kit relishes his celebrity and oozes charm, winning over his captors. Martin Sheen's performance is nothing short of brilliant, while Sissy Spacek is mesmerizing with her ability to chill the viewer. This is an expertly crafted film with an ingenious use of music. The director even manages to utilize the music of Erik Satie (Gymnopedies 3) most effectively, however unlikely it may seem. Like the music of Erik Satie, the film is multi-textured and deceptively complex. Bravo!
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Summary: mesmeric
Review: Great film from director Terrence Malick.His low key,economical style perfectly suits this story of two young lovers on the run.Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek are brilliant as the two leads.Spacek's voice over is especially affecting.Malick's use of music is inspired and extraordinary in the way it plays off,contrasts and compliments the beautiful imagery.American cinema at its finest.
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Summary: DEEPLY DISTURBING
Review: This is a deeply disturbing film made even more so by the sometimes beautiful scenery and the desolate expanses of the badlands. The worst scene is where the two young lovers kill their friends for no apparent reason. The eerie music and Spacek's narration also lend another dimension to the tragic tale, making it a type of psychological study of innocence turned evil. Perhaps Bruce Springsteen says it best in his song Nebraska of which I quote a part of the lyrics:
"I saw her standin' on her front lawn just twirlin' her baton
Me and her went for a ride sir and ten innocent people died
From the town of Lincoln Nebraska with a sawed off .410 on my lap
Through to the badlands of Wyoming I killed everything in my path
Sheriff when the man pulls that switch sir and snaps my poor head back
You make sure my pretty baby is sittin' right there on my lap
They declared me unfit to live said into that great void my soul'd be hurled
They wanted to know why I did what I did
Well sir I guess there's just a meanness in this world."
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Summary: Step Into 'Badlands'....
Review: ...undercurrent to this moody outlaw moovy is the question of how does one raise children in the desolation of the Dakotas. Would there be enough creative resources to make them reach for something beyond the vacuous images from Hollywood and Madison Ave. that seem to form and fester in every crack, rock, and crevice of the world? That's what this moovy is really about--mass produced images and the obsession with the images ultimately deadening all grips on reality and erasing all senses of right and wrong. So much so that the Martin Sheen character thinks he is James Dean and Sissy Spacek may even feel he's James Dean. Well, actually, she probably wanted an escape from the Dakotas. But, the trip is made more surreal for the moovy-goer when he realises that this is a moovy based on reality about young folks who lose their grips on reality. It has no special effects, just that dreary, spooky Spacek voice-over to carry the story thru. Chilling. Compare with "In Cold Blood" and "Bonnie and Clyde" and "The Sugarland Express"...
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Summary: Come watch something remarkable
Review: I have one resolution: if I should ever hit the Big Game lottery jackpot and walk away with a cool hundred million or so, I'm calling Terrence Malick (assuming I can get his phone number -- I may have to resort to smoke signals or Batman's bat-beam) and telling him his next movie is on me. Carte blanche. Whatever he wants. Because I know that whatever idea consumes him so much as to drive him to commit it to film, it is something I, too, must share. We live in an age so bombarded by information, what it takes to sustain our collective attention span has the half-life of a snowball in July. But I have faith in Terrence Malick that whatever message he brings will be not only artistic and well-realized, but will endure. The "myth" of Terrence Malick has somewhat unfairly obscured what is so magical and remarkable about his work. Malick's films are not revered because he is reclusive. They are admired because they recreate our world as a lush and often dreamlike pastoral garden in which the evils of our complex world are simplified and supplied with an unbroken commentary on our human condition. Malick is reclusive because he steadfastly refuses to make movies the center of his life. They are merely another way of expressing a part of what he thinks. The need for celebrity (an artifice that eclipses personal identity) which he so scrupulously rejects, is the same corrupting need for recognition that sends Kit on his murderous killing spree. "Badlands" is as important today as when it was released in 1973. More so. It is a meditation on how the public's fascination with what it cannot grasp -- anything that refuses to accept the limits of convention -- creates celebrity, even going so far as to allow it to worship and romanticize evil. This is not unique to American culture but is certainly one of its hallmarks. Jesse James, Billy the Kid and Bonnie and Clyde are still heroes to some because they rebelled against a monolithic culture which threatens to suppress individual identity. Kit (Martin Sheen) attempts to carve out an identity for himself in his relationship with the underage Holly (Sissy Spacek). When they first make love (an event which impresses him more than her) he suggests they memorialize the moment by crushing each other's hand with a rock. When she rejects the impracticality of the notion (it would hurt), he amends his proposal by suggesting they carry the rock along with them forever. She thinks this equally absurd. He then substitutes a tiny rock, easier to carry. Finally bored with it all, he throws it away, too. The victims Kit leaves in the wake of his violent killing spree are as disposable as the rock. Their deaths are but fleeting memorials to an empty life which is itself defined by these empty acts of violence. Kit wants immortality but is mezmerized by the moment. When the moment is past, however, he finds it boring and empty. Such is the way we look at our own present-day disposable culture. I love Terrence Malick because he creates movies that ask you to do two simple things. First, he asks you to feel, then he asks you to think. The movie's blend of lush photography and sensuous music combines with a lyrical narrative that casts Holly's naivete in counterpoint to Kit's violent instability. All of this evokes a mythic and mystical portrait of the American Badlands -- our own heart of darkness -- wrapped in a simple and twisted love story.
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Summary: Nebraska
Review: Charles Starkweather and Caril Fugate were from Lincoln, NE and Nebraska is where their murder spree took place. Your first review says they were in South Dakota.
Nebraska has "Badlands", too, commonly called, in Nebraska, the Sand Hills.
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