Badlands

1 9 7 3 (USA)

The story of a rock & roll Romeo and Juliet, Martin Sheen's Kit is a self-obsessed adolescent with delusions of grandeur and a desire to dress like James Dean. Sissy Spacek's Holly is a dim-witted and bored teenage girl who joins Kit on his killing spree across the mid-West badlands for no other reason than it is the only opportunity for adventure that she is ever likely to have.

Using the ironic voiceover technique that is now considered de rigueur for today's crop of smart-arsed indie films, Spacek's spoken diary about these two rebels without a cause gives Badlands a level of wit and compassion that most of its numerous imitators have severely lacked.

Badlands was based on the actual killing spree of Charles Starkweather and Carol Fugate in the 1950s and is credited as the inspiration for films like Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers (1994) and Dominic Sena's Kalifornia (1993). This movie has a gentler perspective than those later films, but at the same time it isn't afraid of the brutality that a bland environment and frustrating circumstances can create in a pair of impressionable teenagers.

One of only three films directed by the not exactly prolific Terrence Malick - the others being Days Of Heaven (1978) and The Thin Red Line (1998) - Badlands is often touted as the most impressive debut since Citizen Kane.

TRIVIA NOTE
Bruce Springsteen's song Nebraska is based around the infamous Starkweather murder spree and was heavily influenced by watching Badlands.