Natural Born Killers

After watching this film in the movie theater when it first appeared, I was so appalled by it that I couldn't stand watching any of it's lead actors in any other film for quite awhile. Too violent? Perhaps. What made me ill was the horrid acting, lame screenplay, and pathetic attempt to be "shocking." Maybe it's just my tastes by I like either a character I like/can relate to, or someone that is remotely interesting. Too bad, there is quite a bit of talent involved with this picture.

This film had nothing going for it, even for entertainment value. And if you're going to call it a satire on "Social Criticism", that's just like saying Disney is a spoof on William S. Burroughs! Oliver Stone essentially made a bad movie on purpose, and assumed that the "cult art house" audience would make up a meaning for it and turn it into a religion.(I once knew a girl at work who wore a sterling coiled snake ring for a full year, shortly after the movie's release.) Folks, this movie wasn't supposed to have a meaning, it was a flat out awful turkey, just like it was made to be!

Oliver Stone seems to have outdone himself on this one. Not only is Natural Born Killers a visual masterpiece, but it is probably one of the most insane and nonsensical social commentary films I have ever seen. Disappointing, since it was penned by one of my favorite film directors, Mr. Quentin `Bad Motherf***er' Tarantino himself. The elements of a good story are there: Boy meets girl, boy and girl fall in love and go on a mass murdering spree which is lapped up by the media. While there is definitely a strong social statement, the story is too erratic and scattered to be completely coherent.

Visually however, Natural Born Killers is stunning. It is intensely colorful, unflinchingly violent and innovative in its cinematography. This movie is not for most, but if you decide to try it out, be warned: It is not for the faint of heart, and not for the weak of stomach. But it is an important film for its visual merits, at the very least.

--Shelly

...people really need to take another look at "Natural Born Killers."

The plot: Mickey and Mallory Knox (Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis in roles that are a little too convincing) are a husband/wife pair of serial killers whose vicious crime spree across the country has made them into media superstars.

This movie is a barrage of frightening and surreal images, and is damn near hypnotic to watch.

I can see where the controversy surrounding this film comes from but what I don't understand is where the hate is coming from.

1994's "Natural Born Killers" has to be one of the best movies of the 90s - its sole purpose on this planet is to showcase America's fascination with violence.

But lets try to understand the hate. This movie is here for one reason and I think that we can all agree on that reason. Oliver Stone is a competent and accomplished filmmaker and most of the hate seems to be directed towards him. Stone, who is working from a script that has since been virtually disowned by Quentin Tarantino, pretty much took over and shaped the screenplay to his own vision.

I can understand why fans of Tarantino have a right to be p*ssed off, but I find it extremely difficult to believe that they truly hate the finished product, and the same goes for Tarantino. Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge Tarantino fan myself, and I'm sure he didn't appreciate Stone re-writing his script, but he should be proud of what was done with it.

The message, if you can call it that, is that we are obsessed with violence, and Stone exposes our love for it and spits it back in our faces. To quote Marlon Brando - "The horror, the horror." I say to hell with the hypocritical people who find this movie offensive for they are the ones that this movie is truly aimed towards.

Yes, horrific images are displayed in this movie and terrible things happen to people all throughout, but it's giving us we want, and we hate it. The hate surrounding this film is extremely misguided. My high school paper recently did an article about sex and violence on television and one of the supposed outlets of that violence would be our fascination with the war in Iraq and the Jessica Lynch story.

It said that we are much, much more concerned with the sex (I personally don't think today's teenage girls are THAT impressionable, but who knows?), rather than the violence (which apparently seems to be causing a misguided sh!tstorm of controversy, too, and like the sex, I don't think that people are that impressionable), namely the kind that is seen in music videos and such. Though the article refused to go into specifics (but we know who the people being discussed are and I'm sure they do, too), it brings me back to "Natural Born Killers," which I think people need to take another look at.

In this day and age, violence on television is becoming more and more commonplace, and this movie's relevance seems to make its viewing that much more important. Before we go and continue to bash the hell out of it again, people need to come back and take a look around themselves and watch "Natural Born Killers."

I remember "Natural Born Killers" making a huge fuss when it was released because the media and conservative families were in an outrage over the level of "glorified violence" in the film. To some extent they were right -- the violence isn't glorified but much of it is unnecessary. The movie could still be a brilliant satire of society/the media without going into such graphic detail -- it's been proved in cinema before that sometimes seeing less is better than gratuity. If Oliver Stone's movie has one outstanding flaw, it's the lack of subtlety.

That said, if you can handle the level of violence and take it tongue-in-cheek, "Natural Born Killers" is so bizarre and funny that it's worth the "trip." (Pun intended.) This is a crazy drug odyssey that would have made Hunter S. Thompson look like Ronald Reagan. The film is twisted, outlandish and out of its mind -- Oliver Stone has gone stone-cold crazy and it's awesome.

Despite my reservations about his lack of subtlety, there is a flip side to the coin: It is a story about excess. Stone's film-making has gone somewhat awry over the years (look at the pointless excess of his films after this), but this fits the bill because it IS a story of excess.

Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis play the titular "Natural Born Killers," Mickey and Mallory, a pair of crazy serial killers who both suffered traumatic childhoods and are now rampaging America on a literal killing spree.

After they are finally apprehended, the media has by now turned them into such icons and glorified personalities that the public and media seems to respect them as titans of filth.

This is where the social satire of the film comes into play, essentially saying: We focus more on the killers than the heroes.

I do think it's a bit hypocritical of Oliver Stone to attempt to point this out, as he is a die-hard liberal at his core and, as the controversy surrounding this film's release proved, the conservatives are too conservative to praise killers. It seems to be the liberal media that glorifies violence (to some extent of course) so I thought Stone would be the last person to ever criticize the media.

So yes it does come across as somewhat of a moot point but nevertheless the film is still enjoyable despite its sometimes sickening amount of over-the-top violence (the opening sequence of the Director's Cut is stomach-turning).

The cast is superb - Rodney Dangerfield, Robert Downey Jr., Tommy Lee Jones, Tom Sizemore, Edie McClurg (the rental car agent from "Planes, Trains and Automobiles" and Rooney's assistant in "Ferris Bueller"!) and Denis Leary and Ashley Judd in deleted scenes included in the Director's Cut.

The story was conceived by Quentin Tarantino (and it's very similar to his "True Romance" script -- a sort of modern-day "Bonnie and Clyde Redux") and re-written by Stone (much to the chagrin of QT). I'm not sure which would have made for a better film but, despite its flaws (which are mainly a none-too-subtle message and too much violence), "Natural Born Killers" is a sort of bizarre, outlandish masterpiece of drugged-out cinema. --