Badlands
by Terrence Malick
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Alan Vint, Martin Sheen, Ramon Bieri, Sissy Spacek, Warren OatesDirector: Terrence Malick
Brand: Warner Brothers
DVD: 2 Sides, Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; French (Original Language), Dolby Digital 1.0; English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled)
Format: AC-3, Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, Full Screen, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: Anamorphic Widescreen, 1.85:1
Running Time: 94 minutes
DVD Release Date: 1999-04-27
Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: Warner Home Video
Movie Reviews of Badlands
Movie Review: Emotional Vacuum
Summary: 4 Stars
"Badlands" was released when I was 21 and I'm not sure why I never saw it until last night. I recall a fair amount of controversy at the time of its' release in that it supposedly glorified senseless murder. It does but so did "Bonnie and Clyde" I think movie critics were more in awe of Faye Dunnaway, Warren Beatty, and the Roaring 20's gangster genre in their reaction to "Bonnie and Clyde". Sissy Spacek and Martin Sheen were relative newcomers at the time and Terrence Malick making his directorial debut. I recall a wide range of emotions in "Bonnie and Clyde" including humor (thanks in large part to Michael J. Pollard' one hit wonder preformance). I did not see anything funny in "Badlands". What surprised me was the total lack of meaningful emotion on the part of the two main characters. We are led to like these two (I Think) yet we have trouble grasping their motivation. The initial murder is enough to set the stage. How that could have happened with so little meaningful reflection afterwards made me take a few steps back in my own emotional involvement.
The journey these two take was certainly not what I had expected. The real-life characters (despite the standard disclaimer in the final credits) that these two were portraying were Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate. The man(and woman)hunt for them was intensive and the image we had was that of desperate persons running out of control. "Badlands" brings out the fear and uncertainty of the Central US but shows us a relaxed "What do you wanna do now?" couple who seem like their next stop would be an ice cream parlor. I guess that this is part of the success of "Badlands"; two people who can't see anything in the world except themselves and others who are out to hurt them. Their innocence in how they deal with one another starkly (or starkweatherly) contrasts with how unemotionally they perceive everyone else. For some that will be a comment on violence in the US, our inability to relate to one another in our society, or something of that sort. Others will likely want to condemn these two to a lifetime in juvenile detention. The final part of the film is either meant to endear us even more to the couple or to try and tell us that even evil people have their good days. My own impression is probably still under construction but the blue prints tell me that this is a movie that is very well made and certainly worth watching so long as we appreciate the style rather than the substance.
Summary of Badlands
Dramatization of the starkweather-fugate killing spree of the 1950s in which a teenage girl and her twenty-something boyfriend slaughtered her entire family and several others in the dakota badlands. Studio: Warner Home Video Release Date: 09/26/2006 Starring: Warren Oates Sissy Spacek Run time: 93 minutes Rating: Pg Director: Terrence MalickStill 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-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 na?ve 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
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