MOVIE · 1974

Badlands

ActionAdventureCrimeDramaRomance94 min

In late-1950s South Dakota, Holly, an impressionable teenager from a dead-end town, falls for Kit, an older greaser whose restlessness sends them onto the road and into a string of killings. Sissy Spacek is Holly, narrating the story with a detached, youthful matter-of-factness, while Martin Sheen’s Kit carries himself with a calm that makes the violence more unsettling. Loosely inspired by the Starkweather-Fugate case, the film follows the pair through back roads, open plains, and small-town America as romance, fantasy, and brutality start to blur.