Badlands 1973 Movie Review

Badlands
US (1973): Drama/Crime
95 min, Rated PG, Color, Available on videocassette and laserdisc

Probably we've all seen those convicted killers in prison documentaries on TV who sound uninvolved and mechanical when they talk about their crimes; Terrence Malick's d�but picture extends that uninvolvement to the whole culture. Set at the end of the 50s, it's about an emotionless young killer (Martin Sheen) and his 15-year-old girlfriend (Sissy Spacek), whose killing spree starts in South Dakota. The young lovers are psychologically aberrant and yet just like everybody else; their moral vacuum spreads over the flat, dead landscape. Malick appears to be saying that mass-culture banality is killing our souls and making everybody affectless, but his detached tone puts the viewer in the ugly position of feeling culturally superior to the people on the screen. An intellectualized movie-shrewd and artful, carefully styled to sustain its low key view of dissociation-but so preconceived that there's nothing left to respond to. With Warren Oates; art direction by Jack Fisk. The music is by Carl Orff and Erik Satie. A Pressman-Williams Production; released by Warners.

Directed by Terrence Malick
Produced by Terrence Malick
Written by Terrence Malick
Music by George Tipton Carl Orff James Taylor (theme "Migration")
Cinematography Tak Fujimoto[1] Stevan Larner Brian Probyn
Edited by Robert Estrin
Cast
Martin Sheen as Kit Carruthers
Sissy Spacek as Holly Sargis
Warren Oates as Father
Ramon Bieri as Cato
Alan Vint as Deputy
Gary Littlejohn as Sheriff
John Carter as Rich Man
Bryan Montgomery as Boy
Gail Threlkeld as Girl
Charley Fitzpatrick as Clerk
Howard Ragsdale as Boss
John Womack, Jr. as Trooper
Dona Baldwin as Maid
Ben Bravo as Gas Attendant
In addition, uncredited appearances were made by director Malick as the man at the Rich Man's door, and
by lead actor Sheen's sons Charlie Sheen and Emilio Estevez as two boys sitting under a lamppost outside Holly's house.