Badlands (The Criterion Collection) [DVD]

A pensive bloodbath scattered across the deserts of America.Terrence Malick’s directorial debut Badlands (1973) is a dreamy road trip in which an adolescent teenage girl succumbs to the charms of an older boy hellbent on becoming a criminal wanderer. Badlands continues to influence directors and films alike for its grounded characters, stripped down camerawork, gritty realism, and distinguished apathy to violence. Badlands is simply brilliant art.Malick’s direction is peerless as he allows genuine performances from his actors and natural lighting with a focused visual style. Malick may have influenced the Dogma 95 movement with Badlands’ scenic setting, natural light, no visual effects, and intimate cinematography. Malick keeps the camera trained on Martin Sheen as his character unravels into an ever increasingly violent serial killer. Malick also highlights and holds on Sissy Spacek’s innocent face to display her character’s naive and childlike perspective.Badlands’ score from composers George Tipton, Carl Orff, and James Taylor is stunning. Malick’s choice of innocent and fanciful musical selections create an eerie vibe. Badlands features beautiful ethereal music that accomplishes cold blooded murder again and again. The innocence of the soundtrack likens itself to Spacek’s teenage girl Holly with her wide open eyes that see everything. The music and her narration seemingly from the future or Heaven present an honest retrospective on her life. The childish and carefree music are playing during grotesque animal cruelty, desolate American landscapes, brutal apathetic gunshots, and Southern townsfolk. This is particularly subversive and disturbing as Carl Orff’s music is often associated with children’s educational programming. Badlands contains fantastic scoring that will stick with you like its stark imagery.Martin Sheen is outstanding and captivating as the serial killer Kit, who is a generally disaffected youth as well as a caring love interest. Sheen is fascinating because you empathize with him at first for feeling so bored and aimless in the beginning. But you witness his malaise turn into animal abuse, child kidnapping, and mass murder. Sheen’s crazed eyes gazing into the Sun towards the end speak volumes. He provides the archetype for the youth of America that are on the verge of committing atrocity. I believe Badlands must have influenced Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, David Lynch’s Wild at Heart, Michael Lehmann’s Heathers, Tony Scott’s True Romance or any number of future films with a similar theme.Sissy Spacek is remarkable and hypnotizing as Holly. She is sweet and innocent like a child, but you quickly she is naive to the fact that her boyfriend is just using her. Sheen portrays his character as an apathetic narcissist driven to madness by paranoia and society. Holly is blown around alongside Kit like the wind without her own agency. Spacek is brilliant in depicting a young girl infatuated with her first boyfriend as she slowly realizes what he is capable of and how far he is willing to go to drop out of society.I have to mention Warren Oates is darkly genius in Badlands as Holly's father figure. His playful painter persona is offset by vicious sudden violence towards animals and an underlying threatening attitude. Oates accomplishes a lot with nothing but a few words and glares. I also really appreciated Ramon Bieri as the towering man Cato. His quiet performance is full of nuanced distracted other-worldliness.Badlands is just a fascinating film. It is fun and engaging with a breezy 94 minute run-time. Terrence Malick is the man that appears in the doorway for a neat cameo and the two little boys by the lamppost are Martin Sheen’s children, Charlie Sheen and Emilio Estevez. What a thrilling crime tale and a beautiful dual character study. The shots of cars speeding down highways and Martin Sheen letting bullets fly are just as mesmerizing as Sissy Spacek’s lost gaze.

Yep, I been hearing blah blah blah about MALICK…..and having gone through his entire body of work, due to an Asbergian friends child being my roommate during the lockdown, what a great kid fixated on movies.But, his trip thru Malick- SoniaLeft me feeling anhedonia…sickoa parody on Malick…as it an auteur five star movie, not for the faint of heart…watch MALICK, the movie and he will tell ya….

Inspired by the true life case of Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate, Terence Malick's debut feature film follows two young lovers who go on a short-lived crime spree, like a bored and jaded Bonnie and Clyde. It all starts when Kit, a garbage man, takes a liking to teenaged Holly. Holly's father warns Kit to stay away from his daughter, leading to a showdown of sorts between the two men that ends with an act of violence. Kit leaves a record player playing a recorded message claiming that he and Holly are going to kill themselves (to throw off the authorities), and sets fire to the house before escaping with Holly, setting off on a journey whose course is foreshadowed by something Kit says in the aforementioned recording: "Nobody's coming out of this thing happy...especially not us."From their makeshift home in the woods and a brief, violent visit to an old friend of Kit's, to their dash for the mountains of Saskatchewan (which to Kit represent freedom beyond the reach of the law), we are given a window into Holly's private thoughts through the use of voice-over, a sometimes vapid, sometimes rambling commentary from a young girl that can also be frightening at times, like when she thinks after Kit commits a triple murder: "At this moment, I didn't feel shame or fear, but just kind of blah, like when you're sitting there and all the water's run out of the bathtub."Holly chitchats with a teenage girl, who is likely not much older than herself, surely knowing that the girl will most likely come to a bad end, and soon. Kit records nonsensical "advice" (for whose benefit, we're not quite sure) into a Dictaphone while holding a man and his housemaid hostage. The pair politely ask a man if they can borrow some gas before Kit pulls out a gun when the man refuses. Kit and Holly dance together in the glare of headlights while listening to Nat King Cole. We watch them drive though a great emptiness under painfully blue skies, heading somewhere, reaching for something, while seeming to not quite know where or what it is they are searching for. And all the while we remember those words spoken earlier in the film, "...especially not us." But as Kit concedes in that same recorded message: "I can't deny we've had fun, though."And the reason for it all? There is no reason here, no logic to these senseless acts of violence. It's best summed up in a line from the short story "Nebraska" by Tennessee Jones, a story inspired by the Bruce Springsteen song of the same name, which in turn was inspired by this film. When the girl asks the boy why he killed a man, he answers simply: "I don't think I need a reason for that. He was doing what he does, and here I am doing what I do."

My copy came from Great Britain and would not play here in the USA, at all. Instead, I got an error message about being in the wrong "region," a critical piece of information which was not provided by the seller on Amazon. The seller, Oxford, does not offer a refund. A complete waste of time and money.I bought it on Amazon "Prime" for my account there for a lot less money. Subtitles were provided. Fascinating story told with some artistic license toning down the brutality of the events upon which it is based. If you can, go with the Amazon Prime option.

Malick's movies would get more visually ambitious as his career went on, with sometimes a lesser emphasis on story over stunning visuals. This one however manages to maintain a nice balance between beautiful frames and an interesting storyline. It relies on great chemistry and performances from both leads, Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek, who both shine here with, arguably the best performance of their careers, at least on the movie side. Sheen manages to be compelling, interesting and charming while playing a clear psychopath, which is a testament to his charisma as an actor. This new Criterion collection has great image and sound, accompanied with great documentaries about the making of the movie, and the real life people the main characters are semi-based on. The only thing missing from this release is a 5.1 surround track, it only has a monaural one, and a commentary track on the movie, but sound and image are top notch, clearly some great care was put into restoring this great little movie. At 93 minutes it's a very quick experience, and when it's over it's sort of a shame that there is no more of both these interesting characters.

You can read reviews of this " based on a true story " cracker of a film elsewhere, this is a review of the wonderful remastering that Criterion have done on Terrence Malick's first film. Restored in 4K with the colours rebalanced this is absolutely beautiful to watch especially the scenery in the second half of the film, depth and detail is incredible ( as is the acting). Audio is English LPCM 1.0 which is spot on considering this was released in 1973, English SDH subtitles are also available.Original trailer 3 mins.Making Badlands documentary 42 mins.Two interviews with producer and editor 35 mins.Charles Starkweather - a 1993 documentary about the real killing spree of Starkweather and Caril Anne Fugate, on whom the film is loosely based 21 mins.Last but not least, a 10 page illustrated booklet featuring an essay by filmmaker Michael Almereyda.Obviously it's a U.S. import so it's region A.I can't recommend this release highly enough.See also 'The Sadist ',' Natural born killers ' and 'Kalifornia'.

Excellent Service. Very Quick. The product itself is amazing. Well worth it.

Fantastic movie which I have seen many times before but this is the version to see.

Classic.Never gets old..