bdlnds
“The deliberate mismatch of what you see and what you hear puts Badlands in the surreal neighborhood of a Thoreau nature study crossed with Lewis Carroll. One choice small event occurs near nightfall on the prairie. The still faithful and gullible Spacek is reporting Kit’s latest plan to organize their outlawed life. “Kit said we had to get rid of that football because it was excess baggage.” On screen, Sheen is in the middle of a prairie nowhere, repeatedly shooting a worn-out football, then trying to squoosh out the air with gun butt and cowboy boots. He does it with the seriousness of a chem major. All this takes place about three minutes after her bland sing song reports: “Kit hits cows with the Cadillac to save ammo.”
-MANNY FARBER from the piece “Badlands, Mean Streets, and The Wind and the Lion”
