Badlands

Badlands. Dir. Terrence Mallick.

Feat. Sissy Spacek (Holly), Martin Sheen (Kit), Warren Oates (Father).

Warner Brothers, 1973.

Based on a true-crime story, it stars a young Martin Sheen as Kit, a hoodlum who falls in love with 15-year-old Holly, played by Sissy Spacek, and kills her dad (Warren Oates) so that the two can take off together, with Holly trusting implicitly in her new protector with childlike faith and never questioning her father's murder or where their crime spree is leading. His relationship with the lonely schoolgirl is depicted as disturbing and mutually destructive, yet granted genuinely romantic interludes - including a moonlight smooch to the sound of Nat King Cole.  Such confident complexity is beyond the reach of lesser movies - the superficially similar Bonnie And Clyde feels, well, superficial in comparison. For all the heat generated by that film's blood-spattered shootouts, its stylised brutality pales next to the sudden bouts of violence which occur whenever Kit is backed into a corner. His sense of Southern good manners - calling his victims "Sir", asking humbly, "Suppose I shot you, how'd that be?" - makes the crimes all the more chilling. Both central performances are amazing, but only Spacek went on to become one of the most in-demand stars of the '70s.

The movie is brilliantly composed with a loose and directionless swing that looks easy (but isn't), and a superb and delicate voiceover from Spacek that conveys the bizarre babes-in-the-wood quality of their life together on the run. There are unforgettable sequences, especially at the very end when the captured Kit answers questions from fascinated state troopers as if at a press conference. An unmissable, beautiful classic.