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| Natural Born Killers |
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  (8/10)
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Runtime: 118 |
| Public Rating: 4.51 (375 votes) |
Director: Oliver Stone |
MPAA Rating:  |
| Genre: Drama/Satire |
Year: 1994 |
| Writer(s): Quentin Tarantino (Story) |
| Reviewed by: Timotei Centea |
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Whoa. Let me get my bearings here, and collect my thoughts. Why? Because I've just seen one of the most psychotic, maniacal movies ever nade: Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers. Violent, satiric, ultra-stylised, this movie is bound to start controversy. But is it any good?
"The media made them superstars."
The story, a satire of the mass-media fascination with violence and murder follows Mickey and Mallory Knox (Harrelson and Lewis), two attractive, young, psychotic mass-murderers who, in three weeks weeks of mad rampage through the southern US, attained a body-count of about 50, along with national fame. On their heels: an unorthodox cop (Tom Sizemore), a manipulative, rating-greedy tabloid TV show reporter (Robert Downey Jr.). In their path: weasely prison warden Dwight McClusky, and the American legal system. Make no mistake, though: the script, for the most part, is a satire, and it's surprisingly representative of the American fascination with blood and gruesome crime. However, at times, it does tend to shed a sympathetic light to the two mass-murderers, characters who should, by all normal accounts, repulse and disgust. The script also caricaturises the characters thoroughly while still keeping true to the central point and theme: Mickey and Mallory were both traumatised and abused throughout their childhoods, and have become two adults without regrets and remorse, people who feel that their murders are normal and justified.
The acting is pretty good, too. As the two central characters, Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis give two outstanding performances: their characters are definetly psychotic, and the fact that they kill without a hint of remorse while being so deeply and visibly in love is chilling. Tom Sizemore also gives a good performance as the ruthless, disturbed cop who becomes obsessed with the two killers - however, I could not shake off the fact that his performance was just that: a performance. But the two most interesting and entertaining performances come from Robert Downey Jr. and Tommy Lee Jones. Downey is perfect as the rating-greedy reporter who plays on the nation's fascination with Mickey and Mallory in order to become a celebrity himself. And good old Tommy Lee gives a very, very entertaining performance as Warden Dwight McClusky, a weaselish, squinting man whose control on his prison slowly slips away from him.
And now we arrive to the direction, and one word describes it best: psychotic. Oliver Stone has chosen to go all-out on this: thousands of different film stock types and cameras are used, often at the same time. Stock footage of events and movies is very often combined with the movie scenes in order to create unreal effects. Slow-motion and fast-motion are used throughout the movie. Cartoon versions of the film's main characters fight it out in comic-book style settings. One scene is filmed like a 70s sitcom gone wrong, completely with canned laughter and melodramatic music. Another scene is straight out from a 20's horror movie. And yet another looks like a bad western. Subliminal images abound, many of these gruesome and violent. And throughout all this weaves a soundtrack composed as much of modern rock and pop as it is of film scores, opera, and classical pieces. Suffice to say that the film is pretty overwhelming. And this was a major gripe for many critics, but not for me, because while I think that sometimes Stone went overboard, I believe that this style goes perfectly with the subject, theme, and point of the movie: the obsession of the media with murder and violence.
However, the film is not perfect. First of all, as I stated earlier, Stone's style is sometimes too outrageous and overblown for it's own good, and it just becomes too much. And second, during some of the scenes of the last third of the movie, the film does tend to glorify and cast in a sympathetic angle the two main characters, and it just doesn't work.
But in spite of all that, Natural Born Killers is a surprisingly potent satire that keeps your attention glued to the screen while delivering a worthwhile message. Some may think it's a mess, but then again, it's subject is pretty chaotic too. I, for one, believe it's a carefully modulated punch in the gut from a director who's not afraid to show it like it is, and to rattle a few cages. press enter for each blank line you want.
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