Badlands (Terrence Malick, 1973)

Terrence Malick's major directorial debut is a re-imagining of Bonnie & Clyde. The movie takes place in South Dakota, where Kit (Charlie Sheen) works as a garbageman turned cowhand. He decides to leave work early and on his way home he stumbles across Holly (Sissy Spacek) a fifteen year old living with her widowed father. Kit decides to try and talk to her because he'll "try anything once."
They end up falling in love (or whatever that means for a fifteen year old girl) and when Holly's father find out he is not too happy. Suffice to say Kit isn't happy when, even after telling her dad he has good intentions, he says to stay away. After that Kit decides to try and run away with Holly, everything goes wrong when her father tries to stop them. Kit kills him in an instant (though he claims he was "provoked") and then leaves telling Holly she can call the cops if she likes, it doesn't make much difference. He returns and decides that burning the house down would be the best plan of action. From there they travel across the state with no real plan of action, but with Kit's itchy trigger finger they get into quite a lot of trouble along the way.
I think the most interesting device used in the movie was the score- a very upbeat xylophone and unusual operatic singing- that combined with the distance of the narration by a very naive little girl create a movie that is surreal yet not in the least bit unbelievable. The I particularly liked how this film showed how people in the USA are such celebrity fanatics. Even if the person is famous for killing a handful of people on a pointless killing spree across the great plains.
It is quite obvious that this film has has left a mark on the history of cinema. I thought a lot of the cinematography reminded me of the Cohen Brothers' films No Country For Old Men (2007) & Blood Simple (1984).