Badlands is writer/director Terrence Malick's first film, and exhibits all the essential qualities that would go on to appear in his later projects, including the incomparable award-winning Days of Heaven, The Thin Red Line and most recently, The Tree of Life — meditative voice-overs by the main characters, mesmerizing camera movements, and the shifting, dreamy light and sounds of natural landscapes. There really are no other film sensibilities like Malick's. This 1973 release stars a young Martin Sheen as a sociopathic greaser who starts a crime spree, abducts a young girl (Sissy Spacek) and takes her on the run.