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Natural Born Killers is a disturbing film. It is a great film as well. Visually it looks great and between all that violence there is a message. Criticizing the influence of media with another form of media called film.

With a lot of cuts, strange camera angles, different colors, the kind of music and a lot of symbolism the sick world of mass murderers Mickey (Woody Harrelson) and Mallory (Juliette Lewis) is presented. And the sick world of how people react to their violence. Director Oliver Stone shows it to us with this satire in a great and really disturbing way.

Harrelson and Lewis hit the right tone for Mickey and Mallory. Tom Sizemore as a cop, Robert Downey Jr. as a journalist (representing the whole media) and especially Tommy Lee Jones as the prison warden are great too. Originally written by Quentin Tarantino, although he was not too happy with the result in the end, this is one of the best satires I have seen. May be it is not for everyone, the images are not always that nice, but the meaning must be for everyone.

I've nothing against experimental movie-making. But here technique overwhelms everything else, leaving us with cinematic chaos and maybe a headache. All the rapid- fire jump cuts, color changes, and camera angles add up to an anti-movie mess. It looks like somebody's self-indulgence run wild. To me technique should enhance story, not overwhelm it. Or, in some cases, it might get us to see a familiar theme in a new way. But since there's no real story here, just a sequence of chaotic events, there's ironically no real conflict, just a two-hour waste of film and viewer attention. To be fair, I guess there is a message, something about the media creating a faux reality that sucks people into its seductive realm. That's certainly a worthy, if not novel, theme, especially in our fraught day and age. But unfortunately this movie mess overwhelms the idea without either enhancing it or seeing it in a new way. Too bad.

(In passing—Most folks think of Mallory and Mickey as modern day Bonnie and Clyde. Nevertheless, B&C's main purpose was robbing banks, not killing people, a-la M&M. To me, the apt comparison is with the less well-known, teenagers Charlie Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate. After killing her parents and a baby, their murder spree spread across Nebraska and Wyoming in 1958, and appears motivated by little more than a perverted joy of killing, a-la M&M!)

Greetings from Lithuania.

"Natural Born Killers" (1994) was and still is a messy on purpose and highly stylized action thriller take on media and its approach to violence. The way media sometimes glorifies violence and murders only to get their ratings higher, and a viewer / consumers who is basically responsible for that. In that regards "Natural Born Killers" do work. I also always liked acting of actors in this movie - its like they are having fun despite of controversy subject of the material. This movie also works as extremely dark comedy. Pacing in pretty good and at running time almost 2 hours this movie never looses its steam. Editing and cinematography were crazy - no other way to put it, but of course it is done on purpose.

Overall, "Natural Born Killers" (1994) is a cult classic movie at this point. Even 28 years after its release its still works i think. Acting is entertaining by everyone, directing is unique and on spot and editing as well cinematography are like no other. Good movie but not for everyone's taste.

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. --

I really had to struggle with myself not to turn off. The recordings are really messy and trippy. It's tough to find a tangible moment. Mainly the good actors, foundation of the plot and my will of knowing all of it kept me watching.

Well I have a headache now but at least I know what the movie's about.