Warner Bros. purchased and distributed the film for just under $1 million.[8] Warner Bros. initially previewed the film on a double bill with the Mel Brooks comedy Blazing Saddles, resulting in very negative audience response. The production team was forced to book the film into several other theaters, in locations such as Little Rock, Arkansas, to demonstrate that the film could make money.[13] The film has a 97% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and an average score of 8.9/10 based on the reviews of 59 critics, with the general consensus being "Terrence Malick's debut is a masterful slice of American cinema, rife with the visual poetry and measured performances that would characterize his work."[20] On Metacritic, the film holds a weighted score of 93/100 based on 19 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".[21] Variety stated that the film was an "impressive" debut.[18] Roger Ebert added it to his "Great Movies" list in 2011.[18][22]
Spacek, who plays Holly Sargis in the film, was lauded for her performance, and earned a BAFTA Award nomination.Badlands was the closing feature film at the 1973 New York Film Festival,[3] reportedly "overshadowing even Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets."[23] Vincent Canby, who saw the film at the festival debut, called it a "cool, sometimes brilliant, always ferociously American film"; according to Canby, "Sheen and Miss Spacek are splendid as the self-absorbed, cruel, possibly psychotic children of our time, as are the members of the supporting cast, including Warren Oates as Holly's father. One may legitimately debate the validity of Malick's vision, but not, I think, his immense talent. Badlands is a most important and exciting film."[3]
In April 1974, Jay Cocks wrote that the film "might better be regarded less as a companion piece to Bonnie and Clyde than as an elaboration and reply. It is not loose and high-spirited. All its comedy has a frosty irony, and its violence, instead of being brutally balletic, is executed with a dry, remorseless drive."[7] According to executive producer Edward Pressman, apart from Canby's New York Times review, most initial reviews of the film were negative, but its reputation with critics improved over time.[13] David Thomson conversely reported that the work was "by common consent [...] one of the most remarkable first feature films made in America."[24] Writing years later for The Chicago Reader, Dave Kehr wrote: "Malick's 1973 first feature is a film so rich in ideas it hardly knows where to turn. Transcendent themes of love and death are fused with a pop-culture sensibility and played out against a midwestern background, which is breathtaking both in its sweep and in its banality."[25]
Spacek later said that Badlands changed the whole way she thought about filmmaking. "After working with Terry Malick, I was like, 'The artist rules. Nothing else matters.' My career would have been very different if I hadn't had that experience".[26] In 2003, Bill Paxton said: "It had a lyricism that films have only once in a while, moments of a transcendental nature.... There's this wonderful sequence where the couple have been cut adrift from civilisation. They know the noose is tightening and they've gone off the road, across the Badlands. You hear Sissy narrating various stories, and she's talking about visiting faraway places. There's this strange piece of classical music [an ethereal orchestration of Erik Satie's Trois Morceaux en forme de Poire], and a very long-lens shot. You see something in the distance – I think it's a train moving – and it looks like a shot of an Arabian caravan moving across the desert. These are moments that have nothing to do with the story, and yet everything to do with it. They're not plot-orientated, but they have to do with the longing or the dreams of these characters. And they're the kind of moments you never forget, a certain kind of lyricism that just strikes some deep part of you and that you hold on to."[27]
Martin Sheen commented in 1999 that Badlands "still is" the best script he had ever read.[9] He wrote that "It was mesmerising. It disarmed you. It was a period piece, and yet of all time. It was extremely American, it caught the spirit of the people, of the culture, in a way that was immediately identifiable."[9]
