Arena football  It's a long and winding road for a depressed,
distressed Iraq war vet in "Badland," a strenuously solemn film
that wants to create some kind of American pastoral tragedy out
of the nation's current angst with the war.  It’s a long and
winding road for a depressed, distressed Iraq war vet in
“Badland,” a strenuously solemn film that wants to create some
kind of American pastoral tragedy out of the nation’s current
angst with the war. But whatever dramatic values are mined by
writer-director-editor Francesco Lucente evaporate during an
unconscionable running time of two hours and 45 minutes. Given
the length and the sorry commercial track record of war-related
films this year, the pic is certain B.O. cannon fodder, with the
only hope that inattentive vid renters will confuse it with
Terrence Malick’s “Badlands.”  Like Malick’s astonishing debut,
Lucente’s film tracks an unhinged young fugitive driving across
American pasture land with a naive younger girl. There the
similarities end, as “Badland