Catch-Up Watch: Badlands (1973)

Watched:  05/20/2026

Format:  TCM on DVR

Viewing:  First

Director:  Terrence Malick

I'd put this movie off for about the past 20 years for absolutely no reason.  I loved Days of Heaven.  But somehow I just never hit play on Badlands (1973).  

The movie, in its way, feels quintessentially American.  A clashing of naiveté with cruelty and violence, embodied by our two leads in different ways - a baby-faced Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek (here playing 15 at age 23 or so).  

The movie feels timeless and oddly universal, while de-romanticizing everything about the couple-on-a-crime-spree noir and neo-noir plotting.  Almost like a response to 1967's Bonnie and Clyde.  

The notion is that 25 year old near-drifter, Kit (Sheen), meets a deeply impressionable and lonely 15 year-old-girl, Holly (Spacek) and charms her - mostly just by acknowledging she exists.  We've kind of all seen that one play out.

However, we get early signs that maybe Kit isn't quite right.  Holly's narration gives us what she believes and her perspective - but it's at odds with what the camera sees or what we know.  Though she depicts her budding romance as sweet and forbidden, we can almost immediately see Kit isn't what she says.  He may even be killing animals as he goes along in his work day first as a garbage collector and then as a ranch-hand.  

But Holly has never known kindness, and Kit shows her that.  Her father (Warren Oates) seems emotionally detached from her, but aims to ensure she's marriage material (this is the 1950's).  When Holly's father learns of their coupling, in a rage and to teach her a lesson, he shoots her dog 

Kit, undeterred, claims Holly and destroys the world behind them.  Heading first into the wilderness in a sort of idyll, and then out across the west, sometimes ignoring roads altogether as they head towards mountains that never seem to get closer.  And with a mounting bodycount along the way.

It's dreamy but not as ethereal as Days of Heaven, and feels far more *honest* about how these things happen when they happen.  The characters are not geniuses, they're just drifting around in the universe.  Holly thinks maybe she's found love and Kit thinks maybe he'll be a legend - leaving clues behind like a vinyl disc of his recorded voice playing on repeat outside a burning home.

That's not to say that Holly isn't a bit off herself in that way that Sissy Spacek carried so well in Carrie.  

Malick's films are often heralded for their specific tone, pacing and visuals - something I'm aware of despite having seen only one or two of his movies prior to this one.  Malick wrote and directed and even appears in the film.  His use of photography is film school content.  And while I feel like the visuals are consistent, the movie also has three separate DP's (one is Tak Fujimoto!) which kind of suggests something about Malick's processes at the time.  That had to have been a hard shoot.  No wonder Martin Sheen cratered between this and Apocalypse Now!.  

But, yeah - despite what Netflix will tell you, film is a visual medium.  And the eye of this movie grabs you and doesn't really let go til the last frame.  Stunningly gorgeous in the bleak landscape of the Badlands, it's well worth a review for anyone thinking how to handle their rural film.  Stunning vistas that reflect the story back on itself, and do a lot of heavy lifting where dialog and VO aren't filling in all the details.  Just gorgeous stuff.

I was stunned to find out that the music used was intentionally imitated for True Romance in Hans Zimmer's score.  It seems a mismatch of themes and ideas and robbing someone else's gold - almost like doing so meant they didn't quite grok Badlands but wanted to borrow some the lightning this movie has.

The other day I was just saying to Jamie that whatever past that people imagine they want America to return to with Mom and Apple Pie is completely imaginary.  Any time you look up anyone you look up events or figures from the past - it's always far messier than we want to discuss.  This film is loosely based on/ can be compared to the real life, 1958 rampage of Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate - who killed 11 people inside of about 10 days - for more or less no reason.

And that's Kit.  He makes up reasons, he tells Holly lots of things about why he did what he did, and she's guileless enough to buy it - parroting back what he says.   Even when we kind of guess from the tone of the VO that Kit is not making it out of all of this alive.  But Kit keeps insisting they're having fun - something Starkweather did as well.

There's a fame-hungry void within Kit, and the last we see of him, he's the happiest he is in the whole movie - just thrilled at the attention.  

Like I said, very American.  

The movie may comment upon the falsity of criminal-lovers-on-the-run but it's also part of a mini-category of noir, which is often lover-on-the-run, either innocent or guilty.  So, anyway, we're slotting the film as neo-noir.