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BadlandStarring Jamie Draven, Grace Fulton, Vinessa Shaw, Chandra West and Joe Morton |
IN SHORT: yech. [Rated R for some strong disturbing violence and pervasive language. 160 minutes]
The first thing I was taught in a screenwriting class a decade ago is that you have to provide enough material for the audiendce to "root for" the heroic character. Even if the "hero" is a murderous, low-down scum with few redeeming qualities, you have to put some redemption into the script. If you don't, you could find yourself looking at a couple of hundred millioons in box office for the next Freddie Krueger or Friday the 13th clone.
On our chopping block now is the film Badland -- another bad move, putting the word "bad" in the title <g> -- in which anything that can set up a redemption factor for our SOB "hero" is squeezed into a 7 seconds long sound bite at the opening credits and then waits two and a half hours to expound upon that tease. In between is enough 4 letter cussing (well, that's most of the first five minutes) and 2 more hours of characters, basically, staring off into space . . . leaving you to endure an 160-minute, 4 character would-be epic. It is a film which becomes an unbearable sit long before it drops a big! smash! surprise! into the story and follows the surprise immediately with a plot twist that had us cursing at the screen and praying for end credits (which, luckily, followed immediately).
So . . . you want to know about the film . . . Making us thank God for the Second Amendment is Badland, in which a disturbed veteran of the war in Afghanistan named Jerry (Jamie Draven) comes home to wife Nora (Vinissa Shaw), a pair of sons and an 11-years old daughter Celina (Grace Fulton). Jerry lands a dead end job and manags to blow every spare cent he can get his hands on. Nora hides all the money she and the kids make -- they have paper routes -- 'cuz daddy's on the fast track to disaster. You know things are bad when a film starts off with a husband vs. wife battle with so many four letter words flung that we shut our brains off for the three or four minutes that the thing lasted. The net point of the argument, ladies: never hide spare cash from your wasteful hubbies, especially if they own a gun. Else a large and unhappy family fast becomes a daddy and daughter road trip, for shocking reasons we'll leave alone. That's all the hint you're going to get from us as to what happens. Drive a truck through it.
Jerry and Celina settle in a new home in a new town with new names and jobs as the media blast graphic reports of a bloody crime. [oops, sorry] Wherever they wind up has a bus depot in whose station is a diner run by Oli (Chandra West) an attractive,single blonde in a town with no available single men. Our young femme kidlet will pray (a lot and) out loud for her mom and her brothers to "come home" while she is, essentially, imprisoned in dad's low rent abode. Consider it hard core denial. All, including dad's improvised scheme to throw the cops off the trail, appears to have gone well for new cook daddy except his new acquaintance with a just returned-from-the-war sheriff Max (Joe Morton), a mentally fragile war vet (gee, not unlike "our hero"? Jerry strikes up a friendship, sort of, with Max. It's just a matter of time until one of 'em cracks. The who how and why of said breakdown we'll leave you to discover.
But how are you going to build audience sympathy for a guy who blows his kids' head off? (oh, darn it, there we go, telling...) You can't. Writer director Francesco Lucente spends lots of time working four or five songs into the front of his film, which means an hour and a half more spent catching up expository material. Two more songs towards the end waste more time -- easily half an hour could be cut out of this monster, which would make it a much more enjoyable sit.
The plot: disturbed war veteran Jerry loses it and shoots his wife and 2 sons dead. Not able to kill his daughter, the pair go on the road until he resettles them, with new names in a new town.
On average, a first run movie ticket will run you Ten Bucks. Were Cranky able to set his own price to Badland, he would have paid . . .
$3.00
rent.
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Click to buy films by Francesco Lucente |
| Click to buy films starring Vinessa Shaw | |
| Click to buy films starring Jamie Draven |
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