Rating of
4/4
An empty plot sugarcoated with great direction.
memento_mori - wrote on 08/19/13
Terrence Malick is a very diverse director. Some hate him, some love him, I'm kind of lukewarm about some of his films (Except for The Thin Red Line, that's in my Top Movie List)
This movie doesn't really have that much going for it, in my opinion.
There are few things I actually loved about Badlands, like the direction.
Terrence Malick - even then - is a great visual director. What some people tend to overlook is his very careful look at nature and landscapes. I love the use of the color yellow in this movie. The moon, the plains of what I understood were the Badlands, a yellow dress, et cetera. This is a stunning visual picture.
But, the script feels empty. There is quite a large scope, and the characters visit new places regularly, but I was never excited to see what was going to happen next, because nothing really ever happened. Lengthy scenes with simple dialogue took up what could have been some interesting scenes.
Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek are two very different people, and I think they were completely miscast and put in a position where I didn't believe a love story between these two could work. And it didn't. Sheen was impressive as a sly Southern greaser who looked like James Dean, and Sissy Spacek was pretty much the opposite. Not a bad actress, but she has nothing to do here.
The storyline of Sheen becoming a mass murderer came out of nowhere and didn't feel like it needed to be in the movie at all. I didn't get the feeling that they were in love or willing to kill people. It just didn't fit.
Despite having an interesting premise and beautiful direction and cinematography, it fails to break the fourth wall and get to me as a viewer. Everyone in this movie looks like they are bored. A decent performance by Martin Sheen and a half-a*s screenplay take up only 90 minutes. It has potential to be an engaging crime drama, but scene after scene leaves me with a deadpan perception of the plot and characters. Another classic I think is just okay.
