नैचुरल बोर्न किलर्स

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.

This movie really lowered my view of Oliver Stone. I use to believe he was an accomplished/cutting-edge director, but you can throw that out the window once you've seen Natural Born Killers. This movie was repulsive, disgusting, offensive, and just plain WRONG. I tried to see where Stone was going with it. I honestly tried to find an overall message that you're suppose to feel once the movie is over... but I found nothing. The only thing that stayed with me were the disturbing sequences slammed into my face. There is no anti-violence message like in Boyz In The Hood or anything remotely close to making a statement. This movie teaches about destroying life... not preserving it. If it does ANYTHING, it encompasses everything wrong in this world (all the senseless killings, violence, immorality, you name it) and raises it to the 7th level of Hell. The only thing this movie will do is procreate more violence. Just like its main characters this movie has no conscience.

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!

...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."