NOT COMIN' HOME TO YOU

Remember Jimmie John Hall, ""free and white and twenty-two"" and about ten feet taller with that .357 Magnum in his hand -- cool as you please in his white-topped Toronado? Did you ever hear of Betty Deinhardt, just a fifteen-year-old teenybopper but then why should you -- nobody ever paid any attention to her in Grand Island, Nebraska, until she came out of the picture house and saw Jimmie John waiting -- waiting to take her with him. ""Not Comin' Home to You"" -- that Waylon Jennings jukebox disc -- was kind of their song; it also belongs to many youngsters like them, fantasy fed on folk hero trash, who aren't comin' home again or going no place. Based on an actual story, Jimmie John and Betty streak across the Badlands like Bonnie and Clyde, with a dead man's car and credit card, shooting a gas station attendant here, stopping off long enough to silence her folks -- bang, bang, bang, and ride on out with the hope of that last getaway. . . . Kavanagh, with a professionalism plus, tells their story and gives it a visceral impact while managing to strum on your sympathy at the same time. After all, it's that other American Dream which hunkers over a landscape of diners, drive-ins and motels.