“'Spring Breakers' isn’t about spring break but about the reductio ad absurdum of spring break—a sort of week-long murder camp at the end of which, having snuffed out a sufficient number of lives (and if not snuffed out oneself), a student returns to college refreshed, reenergized, and reeducated or, rather, finally educated in real competition and rendered all the readier for a career in business. Ultimately, the movie is a manual of competitive ruthlessness that offers the repeated banal definition of the drug dealer’s life as 'the American dream.' (A definition given by the gangster himself, Alien—his real name, he says, is Al.) The movie suggests that its spring breakers—especially its two most audacious—are getting, guns ablaze, the education of their life, and that college itself is, rather, the permanent vacation where privileged young people stay clear of the raw realities of America."