This overlong, mawkish yet weirdly mesmerizing film doesn’t just invite identification with its tragically unhinged character; it compels it, by piling on biblically horrible misfortunes, weepy confessions and editorializing music.
40
VarietyRobert Koehler
VarietyRobert Koehler
A strenuously solemn film that wants to create some kind of American pastoral tragedy out of the nation's current angst with the war.
38
New York Daily NewsJack Mathews
New York Daily NewsJack Mathews
Possibly the worst idea for a movie this century.
30
Village Voice
Village Voice
Writer-director Francesco Lucente's overconfident, emotionally forced 160-minute opus offers trite antiwar platitudes--at best--in chronicling the anguished existence of a soldier who can't shake the horrors he experienced in Fallujah.
20
Austin ChronicleMarjorie Baumgarten
Austin ChronicleMarjorie Baumgarten
Badland's only commercial potential lies in the possibility that people may confuse it for Terrence Malick's incomparable "Badlands."
12
New York PostKyle Smith
New York PostKyle Smith
The year's dullest movie has arrived: the deeply silly Badland, which is as dead as winter and twice as long.