Review: Badlands

Set in the late 50s, impressionable young Sissy Spacek hooks up with emotionless bad boy Martin Sheen (whose resemblance to James Dean is always commented upon in the film), who leads her on a killing spree in South Dakota. Warren Oates is solid as Spacek’s stern dad who takes an instant disliking to Sheen.

 

Quite well-acted and fairly interesting 1973 Terrence Malick (“Days of Heaven”, “The Thin Red Line”) take on the Starkweather-Fugate case unfortunately hasn’t aged quite so well. It all seemed a bit romantic and laidback, too heavy on symbolism for my taste. Sheen’s character’s resemblance to James Dean is an interesting idea, however. Spacek plays her role pretty well, but her ‘Dear Diary’-style narration is a constant annoyance, when a more straightforward approach would’ve been much better, and complemented the stark photography by Tak Fujimoto (“Silence of the Lambs”, “Philadelphia”), Stevan Larner (“The Buddy Holly Story”, “Steelyard Blues”), and Brian Probyn (“Poor Cow”, “Downhill Racer”).

 

Personally, I’d rather listen to the Springsteen song instead, but lots of people love it, even if I’m not one of them. Sheen is truly excellent as the disaffected rebel/killer, however. Solid, but a bit overrated perhaps.

 

Rating: B-

 

 

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