Quick recap: There’s nothing quite like young love: Going on a cross country adventure together,  being wrapped up in the very essence of the other person, going on a shooting spree after violently murdering your girlfriend’s father. So sweet.

That Martin Sheen was quite a looker back then

Fun (?) fact: Martin Sheen’s sons, Charlie Sheen and Emilio Estevez, have uncredited roles as boys playing under a lamplight.

EVERY.SINGLE. TIME Emilio Estevez’s name is mentioned, this clip comes to mind

My thoughts: Usually, I try to crank out a review about a day after watching the movie. I like it to be fresh on my mind as I add my All Important Opinion to this tiny space on the internet. This time, however, life got in the way, so it’s been about three days since I watched Badlands. Had I stuck to my schedule, I would’ve given this movie a negative review with plenty of sarcastic comments thrown in for good measure. As it is now, more time means more opportunities to think about what I watched and I’ve  come to an understanding that  Badlands really is an exceptional film.

As the credits rolled the other night, I would describe my mood as ‘unimpressed’. I really enjoyed Sissy Spacek’s performance, especially considering she was in her 20s perfectly playing a teenager. Her diary voiceovers were so unnerving because she sounds every bit like a normal girl having her first romance, but here she is, on the lam with the guy who murdered her father as well as several other people along the way. She mostly gives off an air of boredom, as if small town life in South Dakota was the worst so why not join a killing spree? My nonchalance was mostly due to the inevitability of the ending, I think. Of course Kit and Holly couldn’t run forever and seeing as how I disliked the two of them as a couple, I was relieved when it all went down and both were captured. My mistake in dismissing this movie was the focus on the characters and their relationship instead of literally everything else in the film.

Seeing as this is a Terrence Malick film, it should go without saying that Badlands is gorgeous. Despite the horrible and sometimes needless killing, everything about the drive Kit and Holly made was beautiful. I’ve always had a fantasy of driving West but this film has me thinking that North might be the best direction to go. As for the theme, it really resonated with me how the entire country lived in fear of Kit and Holly until they were caught, and then he became a celebrity of sorts. He got his comeuppance in the end with a trip to the electric chair but Malick really captured America’s obsession with true crime and how we are constantly in a state of fear and adoration over the same people.

Final review: 4/5

Up next: Drugstore Cowboy