This film is based on the Leopold and Loeb murder trial that happened in the 1920s and was considered by many to be the "trial of the century" when it occurred. Leopold and Loeb were two college aged young adult males who prided themselves on their "superior" intellects, so they sought ought to prove their intellect to others by committing the perfect crime, they murdered a 14 year old boy to prove they could get away with it. Obviously the crime was not made without mistakes, otherwise the two never would have been caught, but they were due to one of the men leaving behind his glasses at the scene of the crime. The two were represented by arguably the most famous defense lawyer of all time Clarence Darrow (the same attorney appointed to the defense at the legendary Scopes Monkey trial, that occurred one year after the Leopold and Loeb case). Darrow gave a 12 hour speech pleading directly to the judge (when pleading guilty to a charge, a jury can be thrown out and the defense can aim their argument solely at the judge) which is thought by many to be the best of his career. The film did a very good job of being accurate when describing the details of the actual crime and the trial. The only thing that may not have been the most accurate in the film was the portrayal of the relationship between Leopold and Loeb, in real life their relationship was also an intimate one, and due to film codes in the 1950s that detail of the case was spared. I am also unsure how much of the speech made by Darrow was word for word accurate in the film, but I do know that it is one of the best speeches I have
ever heard in general, and by far probably the best speech/argument I've ever heard against the death penalty. The legendary actor/director Orson Welles played Darrow in the film and gave a phenomenal performance, even if he only was in the film for less than a half hour (out of the films two hour total length). The rest of the acting was all very good as well, Dean Stockwell gave one of the more notable performances of his career. This was the first critically acclaimed fact-based crime drama directed by Richard Fleischer, Fleischer would go on to direct at least two other critically acclaimed crime dramas based on true stories with The Boston Strangler (1968) and 10 Rillington Place (1971), as well as several famous sci-fi films (Soylent Green[1973] and The Fantastic Voyage[1966]). There are several other films based on the Leopold and Loeb murder case, the most famous being Alfred Hitchcock's Rope (1948) with Jimmy Stewart, and French director Michael Haneke's Funny Games (1997), but Compulsion is the most historically accurate portrayal. The film did drag a little bit at times though, and the trial only took up the last half hour or so of the film, so with those being my only beefs with the film I give it a 4.5/5 and I recommend it to anyone who likes classic films, or crime dramas. You can view the trailer below:
Terence Malick has only directed six movies in the last 40 years, and Badlands (1973) was his first film. The film is based on a real life murder spree committed by the young couple of Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate while travelling across the US in the 1950s. All of Terence Malick's films are critically acclaimed with very little to no negative reviews and I won't break the chain. Martin Sheen (father of Charlie Sheen and Emilio Estevez) and Sissy Spacek (the Original Carrie) are great in their respective roles: Sheen as a mentally delusional trigger happy emotionless anton Shugar (No Country For Old Men)-like character, who is simultaneously a James Dean lookalike/wannabe and mixed up youth, and Spacek as the mixed up naive 15 year old Sheen takes along on his ride. The film is beautiful visually, shot in the Badlands of South Dakota, and in telling it's story: the murders and murderers are not glorified, rather we see how delusional sheen's character is and the rise and fall of his relationship with Spacek as she realizes how crazy he really is. Think Bonnie & Clyde with Bonnie being a whole lot less involved. The film is now part of the Criterion Collection. I give it a 5/5. You can view the trailer below I recommend stopping around 2:02 though, because the rest of the trailer is pretty revealing of the rest of the movie:
