Badlands
“In 1959 a lot of people were killing time. Kit and Holly were killing people.”
Terrence MalickCast
Martin Sheen 
Sissy Spacek 
Warren Oates
Credits
Written by: Terrence Malick
Plot
In 1950s South Dakota, fifteen-year-old Holly meets the charismatic garbage collector Kit, who resembles James Dean. After he kills her father, they flee, and then drift across the Great Plains and the Montana badlands while he kills almost casually. Terrence Malick's 1973 debut, loosely based on the case of Charles Starkweather, with Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek, juxtaposes violence with lyrical landscapes and Holly's flat, dreamy narration.
Sinekatalog’s take
Terrence Malick's debut turns a lovers-on-the-run crime story into a dreamy, detached fable. Sissy Spacek's naive narration and Martin Sheen's cool killer make for a hypnotic, unsettling film.Sinekatalog’s own editorial review – not a user or critic quote.
Ratings
IMDb: 7.7 / 10 (85,729 votes)
IMDb rating and vote count from the IMDb ratings dataset (October 2026). Scores change over time.
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