Murder in the Heartland

This movie does a fair job of re-telling the Charles Starkweather story but falls short of the original picture starring Martin Sheen. The story itself is quite different and I have to believe the latter is a little bit more accurate. Excellent acting by Tim Roth and Fairuza Balk's courtroom scenes were quite good. Overall a fair movie.

It is a real shame this film is not available on home video, as I found it to be extremely well done and memorable. It is based on the notorious Charles Starkweather murder spree of the 1950s, and as a (more or less) true story, it automatically carries a certain level of fascination for afficionados of classic crime cases.

But this one has much more. It gives the viewer a sense of the complexities of the people involved. Starkweather's jailbait girlfriend, Caril Fugate (Fairuza Balk) comes across as oddly pathetic, the product a wretched home life. As such, she is credible and intriguing. She is docile and submissive but stubborn, as well. While not quite likeable, the viewer can feel some empathy toward her.

Starkweather, on the other hand, is a study in absolute amorality. His purposeless life unravels into madness on screen, with Fugate following, sometimes willingly sometimes out of fear or compulsion.

This is an intelligent film. Much is left to the imagination of the audience. It is a long movie, but absorbing. I recommend it highly.

As a child I remember reading about CarilAnn Fugate in one of those"Whatever Happened To.." books that my mother used to read!Of course she was still in the Nebraska Women's Prison,filing her appeals to her parole board.Some years later a discussion came up in my college psychology class about CarilAnn Fugate's recent release from prison and her apparent "antisocial personality disorder".Then in 1993 she popped-up out of nowhere,calling an angry press conference and venting her wrath over the airing of a TV movie about her "ordeal" as a "child" Naturally,being a movie and crime buff,I became fascinated with the Starkweather-Fugate case!Reading almost anything I could get my hands on about it and even watching "Badlands" and was surprised how close it came to the truth!However,I couldn't wait to finally see "Murder in the Heartland"! Hoping to maybe see the case played out and form some opinion about it for myself! Well...This movie definitely shows the known facts of the murder spree and sticks almost completely to the testimonies and the speculations!Perhaps so much that it leaves the viewer confused about young CarilAnn's actual level of involvement and the harshness of her consequences!Played to eerie perfection by Tim Roth and Fairuza Balk.The harrowing murder spree of Charles Starkweather and CarilAnn Fugate is one that will shock and bewilder!!

In the 21st Century, serial murder and spree killings are two a penny, but when Charles Starkweather began his murder spree in December 1957, it was big news.

Aside from the callous and random nature of the murders, all but one of which were committed at the end of January 1958, there were other factors that caught the public eye, including the young age of the perpetrators: Starkweather was 19, and his girlfriend Caril Ann Fugate was only 14.

This film adheres closely to the facts of the case and is as much historical document as entertainment. The actual role of Fugate has never been properly resolved, but one issue that appears strangely never to have been raised is the nature of their relationship. Today, a 19 year old who has sex with a 14 year old is committing rape, or at best statutory rape. While in the UK the authorities take a pragmatic approach to girls just under the age of consent having sex with their slightly older boyfriends, today Fugate would have been considered a victim of "grooming" by Starkweather; it remains to be seen how this would have mitigated her involvement, but you can bet feminist mischief-makers would have made something of it.

Starkweather was executed for his crimes - we see him die in the chair - but Fugate was paroled after around 17 years. She is played here by Fairuza Balk who turns in a stellar performance, while Tim Roth plays the nihilistic Starkweather the way you imagine the man himself was, completely without emotion, murdering neither for money nor for sadistic thrills but simply because he could.

Why anybody would want to retell the story of Charles Starkweather so many years after the events that made him notorious is beyond my comprehension.

Perhaps it was just meant to be a character study: Tim Roth dominates the entire show as a passionate, capricious, and utterly fascinating Starkweather.

The film disturbs me because I doubt that the real Starkweather was so interesting. Contemporary accounts suggest he was a sociopath unable to calibrate his responses to all those negative situations of life: envy, frustration, depression. The director has done a great job; the question is, why.

While this film is not well known compared with Pulp Fiction, even Rob Roy, Roth's performance is spellbinding - at least as good as his role in Reservoir Dogs.

It deserves to be seen, as a landmark of late 20th century, one of the really great performances by an actor, rather than a star turn by an overhyped PR product.