How does Woody Harrelson feel about Natural Born Killers?

From director Oliver Stone comes this flashy but frustratingly uneven and unfocused story of a sadistic, recently married couple who brutally butcher random people across the United States as part of their honeymoon. Their heinous acts and eventual apprehension attract the attention of the media and interested viewers all over the world, but instead of punishing them they would prefer to tell their life story. Well-crafted film holds your interest by making social points that are poignant, provocative, at times even satirical, but alas, they're set in the midst of noisy and excessive action scenes that are relentless and headache-inducing, not to mention extremely violent. Cast is good, especially Harrelson and Lewis who make a good match, but they need much more sturdy direction. **

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10/10

dee.reid20 December 2003

...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."

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8/10

85122212 July 2022

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.

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7/10

FilmOtaku20 October 2003

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

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7/10

MovieAddict20164 May 2005

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. --

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4/10

JasparLamarCrabb4 July 2007

Wow! Oliver Stone makes a David Lynch film...a bad David Lynch film. From a script by Quentin Tarantino no less! Stone over-directs so much it's difficult to know what's going on much less enjoy any of it. It's not thrilling, just brainless violence that's so stylized it's incomprehensible. If that's what Stone had in mind, then he's made a masterpiece. Nevertheless the film has more than just bad direction working against it. The casting of non-entities Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis as Mickey & Mallory, a white trash version of Bonnie & Clyde, whose crime spree is chronicled in gruesome detail by muckraking TV reporter Robert Downey Jr doesn't help. They don't have the depth or gravitas to shines through the muck left behind by Stone's direction. They're lightweights when the film needs the likes of Dennis Hopper and Sissy Spacek. The rest of the cast doesn't fare too well either. Tommy Lee Jones is embarrassingly bad as the prison warden bent on capturing the couple and Downey, affecting an Australian accent, is dismal. Rodney Dangerfield and Edie McClurg have cameos as Lewis's parents. Ashley Judd's scenes were cut from the theatrical release.

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8/10

rbverhoef20 March 2003

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.

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5/10

chaswe-2840223 March 2017

Goes on a bit. The suits who wanted to cut it down were on to something. It could have been shortened by about 25%. The violence ceased to be disturbing after a while. Screen violence is never really convincing, since one knows it is just a movie, and before long here it just washed over my head, and grew tedious. Only psychological torture actually hurts. The psychology here is limited to rather soppy romance, except in the case of Mallory's repulsive father, who got what was coming to him. The message of killing being naturally born was plain enough.

Juliette Lewis was good in her part, and Woody Harrelson was OK in a less demanding role. However, Robert Downey Jnr, and the rest of the cast, when it came to the prison riot, were little more than a multiple pain in the neck. This was especially true of Downey and his twitchy face, which became exceedingly annoying and irritating. His would-be Australian accent seemed utterly pointless. The riot went on and on to no purpose, and while it may have entertained the public, when shown on television, it soon ceased to entertain me. The prolonged trippy, psychedelic style grew wearisome, as well. One watch, no more.

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10/10

TBJCSKCNRRQTreviews7 November 2004

I haven't seen too many Oliver Stone pictures; JFK, Scarface(which he wrote, not directed), and this one. I don't know too much about his directorial style, but if any of his other films are like this one, I'll have to watch more of them. The visual style is amazing. The whole film has sort of a psychedelic visual style, and utilizes constant cuts and constant change in color scheme, often changing between powerful green, blue, red and even black/white. Of course, none of this is random. It's there to project symbolism and keep the mood intense and constantly evolving, and, believe me, it works perfectly. With many references to popular media(television, mainly), demons and the desensitizing effect of television. The effect of half of the imagery being seen through a television screen or hallucinated is amazing. The film is experimental and psychological. As Stone puts it in the documentary, it's a film about two people breaking the rules, so it's only fitting that the film-makers are also breaking the rules. It's chaotic and wild, insane and mentally exhausting. It's a film about pain, violence and giving in to cravings and desires. But it in no way romanticizes the aforementioned three points. Quite the opposite. I believe someone once told me that the film makes killing and violence look appealing. I can't even explain how wrong that is. This truly is an amazing film. If you can sit through this, and you (honestly) think of yourself as perceptive and intelligent, you have to see this movie. It's not just recommended or a good idea to watch, it's mandatory for anyone that 'get' it. The plot is great and well-paced. It's never boring. The acting is great. The characters are well-written, credible and so easy to understand and sympathize with that many will hate the film for it. The whole film is amazing on so many levels. I recommend it to any person who believes himself or herself to be hardened and intelligent enough to sit through it, and, more importantly, understand it. I recommend you get the directors cut, as it keeps everything that the other released version cut off. Highly recommendable. 10/10

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7/10

Leofwine_draca1 September 2016

Oliver Stone's most controversial film is a breakneck satire of the media's attitude towards violence. This notorious movie tells the story of a couple of mass murderers who end up getting caught in a media whirlwind as they're pursued by a shock journalist desperate for the 'number one' interview. Stone goes all out on style with this movie and it's one of the craziest you'll see: back stories are played out in the manner of '50s sitcoms, all manner of media is called into play (black and white film stock, back projection, hand camera) and the film itself is an over-the-top glorification of violence and insanity that just screams offence at just about everybody.

It's actually a very good satire – one of the most biting I've ever watched – and also one of the darkest movies you'll see. That's after you get past the first hour, that is. Word up – I absolutely HATED the first hour of this film, which tells the story of a modern day 'Bonnie and Clyde' and their murderous antics. Stone's outrageous direction is matched by the outrageous performances he elicits from his stars, and it got very tiring after five minutes or so. There are plenty of better films in a similar vein and the previous year's KALIFORNIA, also starring Juliette Lewis in a very similar role, was much better.

Then the killers are caught and the film becomes interesting AND original. Obnoxious TV journalist Robert Downey Jr., is introduced, sporting an annoying Australian accent and giving the craziest performance of his career; he damn near steals the movie from everybody else. Tom Sizemore's on hand to show that perverts don't just exist on the wrong side of the law, and then the whole film moves to a prison for the last third where it gets REALLY good. Stone depicts a prison riot as a trip to the very depths of Hell and his use of the hand-held camera during this bloody moment of mass insanity recalled to me the gut-wrenching depths of CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST. This final set-piece is bigger, starker, and darker than anything that's come before, and it's where I REALLY sat up and started taking notice.

I don't really like 'message' films as such – and there's plenty for Stone to dwell on here. The cult of celebrity, the media's obsession with violence, true crime programmes, insanity, true love, crime and punishment, it's all covered here with plenty of intelligence. Woody Harrelson holds everything together with the bone-chilling performance of his career and while I've never liked Juliette Lewis, she's impossible to ignore here. Tommy Lee Jones goes way overboard as the agitated prison governor and Stone has a lot of fun with the violence, script and twisty-turny plot. Weird – a film I started off hating ended with me absolutely loving it. NATURAL BORN KILLERS is one heck of a roller-coaster ride.

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10/10

kevin_robbins28 September 2021

Natural Born Killers (1994) is currently available on Tubi and tells the tale of two troubled souls who find peace in eachother and try to live a life away from society. When they do run into spciety bad things happen...only leading to society not leaving them alone even more so. This movie is written by Quentin Tarantino(Pulp Fiction), directed by Oliver Stone (Platoon) and stars Woody Harrelson (White Men Can't Jump), Juliette Lewis (From Dusk Till Dawn), Robert Downey Jr (Ironman), Rodney Dangerfield (Caddyshack), Tom Sizemore (Strange Days) and Pruitt Taylor Vince (Identity). The cast selection and execution in this is absolutely brilliant across the board, including some great cameos (Steve Wright and Dangerfield). The script and mannerisms fit the cast so well and the violence was brilliant and fun. This feels like a Rob Zombie movie decades before Zombie. The crime drama television re-enactments are hilarious in this and so was Downey. This is probably Woody Harrelson's all time greatest performance. This is a magnificent stylish film way ahead of its time that also stands the test of time. Definitely a must see and a 10/10.

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9/10

Erick-1210 February 2005

Natural Born Killers

Released just long enough ago to be forgotten by today's standard of speed amnesia, this film by Oliver Stone is worth seeing again. The violence in it was sickening just a few years ago, but such things have quickly gotten normalized in our culture's ongoing desensitization. Ironically, this very process of media desensitization is precisely the topic of this film's satire. NBK has since even been the subject of copycat crime sprees, or so the culprits claimed. This is troubling, because while the film works hard to analyze the dubious process by which violent killers are turned into romantic heroes in the mass media, NBK seems unable to escape from the same orbit, ending with the killers as living happily ever after, justified by the brutality of their backgrounds, and morally superior to the prison officials and popular journalists who pursue them. But as a postmodernist satire of media saturation-violence, from wrestling to sit-coms to real crime dramatizations to obsessive live news interviews, Stone's film is a thought provoking exercise that is stylistically mesmerizing.

As a postscript, several people accused Stone of inciting copycat crimes and called for him to be sued for damages-- which happened. The lawsuit was dismissed. At the least he was negligent, they argued. Interesting to me that the glorification of violence found everywhere in the thriller genre is taken to be safely neutral, while a powerful satire of glorification is condemned as, well, too violent. The last time I checked, this was always defined as "hypocrisy". The major contradiction in media culture now is that on the one hand, Natural Born Killers is reviled for inciting violence, while on the other hand, it is reviled for being _too obviously_ critical of media violence in a simplistic and unsubtle manner. But can we have it both ways? No.

A 2nd postscript on another form of hypocrisy: Quentin Tarantino, the reigning postmodernist "King of Cool" who plays with pastiche of pop culture genres, wrote the script for Stone's Natural Born Killers, but then criticized the way the film was directed. Ironically, Tarantino then copied several formal film techniques and innovations straight out of NBK for his later "Kill Bill" films. -- with the key exception that Tarantino continues the tradition of glamorizing violence. The Tarantino crowd sees itself as properly aesthetic and cool, far above the ham-fisted Stone! Creepy isn't it?

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4/10

galileo330 December 2007

NATURAL BORN KILLERS (1994)

Cinema Cut: R

Director's Cut: NC-17

It's an unusual Oliver Stone picture, but when I read he was on drugs during the filming, I needed no further explanation. 'Natural Born Killers' is a risky, mad, all out film-making that we do not get very often; strange, psychotic, artistic pictures.

'Natural Born Killers' is basically the story of how two mass killers were popularised and glorified by the media; there is a great scene where an interviewer questions some teenagers about Mickey and Mallory, and the teenager says 'Murder is wrong.... but If I was a mass murderer I'd be Mickey and Mallory'. Mickey describes this with a situation of 'Frankenstein (the monster) and Dr. Frankenstein' - Dr. Frankenstein is the media who has turned them into these monstrous killers

Most Oliver Stone films examine the flaws of the America, the country that the director loves and admires. I guess 'Natural Born Killers' is about the effect of mass media, technology and how obsessive as a nation, Americans are (and most of the world) over things such as mass killers and bizarre situations.

The killers played by Woody Harrelson (Mickey) and Juliette Lewis (Mallory) are executed astonishingly by two excellent actors who step into the lives of two interestingly brutal killers. Mickey and Mallory believe that some people are worthy of killing, perhaps in the cruel theory of Social Darwinism (survival of the fittest) - Mickey says in his interview in prison, that other species commit murder, we as humans ravage other species and exploit the environment; the script is interesting, but it is questionable how much this film amounts to, in the sense of making us think about society and human behaviour, rather than the intensity of a 2 hour bloodbath that we have seen.

The last hour of the film takes place in a maximum security prison; we see the harsh realities of prison life; the attitudes of the warden etc;overfilling of prisons - maybe Stone is questioning the future, the path that society is leading to.

Two other interesting characters; First, a reporter who runs a show about 'America's Maniacs' and is obsessed with boosting ratings, that he goes to any length to capture the story of Mickey and Mallory. The other is police officer Scagnetti, an insane, perhaps sadistic officer that is in love with Mallory - he also has some weird obsession with mass killers, since his mother was killed during the massacre at Waco, Texas by Charles Whitman.

The cinematography is superb; different colours, shadows, styles create a feeling of disorientation; the green colour most evident of all is green, to resemble the sickness of the killers (in the drugstore when they are looking for rattlesnake antidote).

The camera work is insane; shaky, buzzy, it takes some determination to get use to it and accept it. Highly unorthodox, psychedelic and unusual.

'Natural Born Killers' does not glamourise the existence of insane murderers, it questions it and how we as the public may fuel this attribute...

Although the above review sound quite positive, I did dislike the film. Quentin Tarantino, who originally wrote the script for the film, was not pleased with the altered screenplay and he asked for his name to be removed. I can see why. While mildly interesting at times, Natural Born Killers is a mess of a picture.

4/10

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3/10

paul2001sw-121 November 2006

Oliver Stone has made many films of some merit, but this merit is often drowned amid background noise; Stone simply doesn't do quiet. Quentin Tarentino has made some brilliantly clever movies, often featuring a deliberate lack of restraint that sometimes makes one gasp in admiration, but which sometimes seems utterly gratuitous. Put them together, as in this film (which Tarentino scripted, and Stone directed), and unfortunately the result is not a masterpiece, but a film that appears to be all gratuitous noise and very little else. Superficially, the film is a satirical attack on the media celebration of serial killers, not unlike the Belgian film 'Man Bites Dog'; except that the film is a celebration of them itself; and except for the further fact that the whole movie is so over-the-top in every way that in fact, a word like satire is simply rendered meaningless. The result is certainly vivid, and the imagery that Stone marshals seems to hint at some kind of intended political message, but what we actually get to see is more like a drug-addled nightmare. I have to admit, I didn't really get the point of this movie, and Robert Downey Junior's hyperactive character is virtually unwatchable. Perhaps it's just too clever for me; but I suspect, it's simply a lot less clever (and a hell of a lot less funny) than it thinks it is.

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1/10

kenjha27 December 2012

Young lovers go on a killing spree, glorified by the media. The opening scene is so over-the-top that one expects the movie proper to start thereafter with some sense of coherence and narrative flow but it never comes. In fact, it soon goes downhill with a cheesy sitcom sketch that is meant to be clever but falls flat. This is perhaps the worst movie ever made by an Oscar-winning director, as Stone is at his self-indulgent worst, utilizing such cheesy tricks as tilted camera angles, random use of black and white cinematography, movies playing in the windows of houses, and animation. Combine all that with abhorrent violence and a pointless script and you have a film that is unwatchable.

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5/10

rmax30482329 January 2010

What a whirlagig of a movie. It is in your face every second of its running time. It never stops. It may take a lickin but it keeps on blaring. The only soothing thing about it is the musical score, which ranges from "A Night on Bald Mountain" to the heftier portions of "Carmina Burana" when the electric guitars aren't whanging and the electronic drums not palpitating.

The story, insofar as I could make it out among the glitz, roughly follows that of Starkweather and Fugate in the 1950s. Woody Harrelson is Mickey Knox. He runs off with teen-aged Juliette Lewis after he kills her hated father. They indulge themselves in a spree of moral nihilism. Dead bodies abound. There are bath tubs of gore. The screen, and the people on it, are riddled with bullet holes.

The malignant duo are turned into heroes by the media. Fan clubs spring up. Their Hooper rating goes up with each new pile of cadavers. Finally, though, they are cornered by police, led by Detective Scagnetti, famous as the author of a book called "Scagnetti on Scagnetti." The two are isolated for a year in the same penitentiary.

A rabidly ambitious Australian journalist, Robert Downey, Jr., who hosts a TV program called "American Maniacs" is given permission to interview Harrelson. But Woody, no more of a slouch in the department of brains than in gonads, grabs a shotgun during the interview, rescues Lewis, and shoots his way out of prison, while the elated Downey follows them with his TV camera and immortalizes them.

Well! This movie raises a lot of questions. The first question is, "Why was it made?" The director was Oliver Stone and I guess his message is clear enough. The media and violence feed on one another. You know -- "If it bleeds, it leads"? But was it really necessary to put the viewer through the wringer like that? Okay. Stone understandably disapproves of the degradation of vernacular culture, but what did WE ever do to him? I can't speak for you, but he doesn't even KNOW me! Some of the cinematic chicanery is germane to the story or the message it puts so much effort into conveying. The tornado that permits Harrelson to escape from his first prison is straight out of "The Wizard of Oz." During scenes of violence, there are momentary inserts of cartoon monsters. Lewis's tragic home life is presented with a laugh track as a situation comedy. We get it. The visual media intrude into every aspect of our lives and we frame our experiences in accordance with the models they provide.

But other exercises in directorial pyrotechnics lead nowhere except to confusion. There is an ordinary two-shot of law enforcement officers -- Tom Sizemore and Tommy Lee Jones -- walking along a corridor. The simple scene goes from color to black and white to negative and back; from slow motion to step motion; to point-of-view shots of Jones' shoes. Why? The tricks tell us nothing about the story, the characters, or the moral principle.

The title of the movie, "Natural Born Killers", is Harrelson's reply to Downey's query about why Harrelson committed those dozens of murders. Inmates have ready responses to questions like that. (In sociology they're part of a generic process called "accounting.") Harrelson is saying, "I did it because that's the kind of guy I am." He goes on to explain that murder is part of nature. That's not bad as far as it goes, although it's utterly meaningless. Other, real examples that I've heard inmates give for theft or murder include, "It was nothing personal," and (for a killing in prison), "He had no business being there (in the wrong wing)." They're not meant to be taken literally. They're just a way of indicating that logic is dispensable because there is no answer. Incidentally, when Lewis unzips Harrelson's trousers in the visitor's room, that conforms to my observations at the California Men's Colony in San Luis Obispo. (I was there for a job interview as a psychologist.)

I hope that last paragraph wasn't too scrambled. I think I'm still a little dizzy. How did all these tiny butterflies get into my office in the dead of winter? Gee. They're chartreuse.

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1/10

mnpollio20 April 2011

It is rare to come across a film so offensive and thoroughly reprehensible and devoid of entertainment value like Natural Born Killers that it should almost earn another star for that distinction alone. Alas, I will restrain myself from that scant praise.

Oliver Stone's over-the-top acid trip follows the exploits of a pair of serial killer lovers played by Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis, who become a media sensation during their cross country killing spree. And there you have the plot.

Stone's fans will say that the film has lots to say about our media culture, sensationalism and violence. While it is true that it may have something to say - it is an overstatement of biblical proportions that it has "lots" to say. In fact, one can argue that it barely scratches the surface and rather than being a stinging indictment of any of those issues, ends up glorifying them in its own right. Rather than castigate the media culture for raising the remorseless killers into some sort of folk hero status, Stone's film rather seems to half believe that they are worthy of such status and he often depicts their army of hapless victims as a gallery of grotesques that have it coming.

The violence and imagery of the film is disturbing and not in a good way. There is literally no restraint or sublety...anywhere. Not in the direction, not in the acting and not in the - although I am loathe to use this term for this screenplay - writing. Whereas Bonnie and Clyde may have been romanticized for cinema, NBK's Mick and Mallory are appalling in every way. Certainly no one could possibly sympathize with them. They murder people for kicks and basically get away with it. If anything, the fact that the film has any complimentary critical accolades and supporters merely cements my assertion that if legendary lousy film director Ed Wood had been born later, he would have been deemed a genius. Stone's film is incoherent, rambling, overlong, largely pointless and drenched in violence. His imagery is completely foolish and oftentimes laughable. Characters will be sitting in a hotel room, while babies float by the window. While traveling down the highway, a giant monster stomps by the car. It is like Stone raided the stock footage department and pell mell superimposed it into the background of his wretched film. When depicting Lewis's crummy home life, the film suddenly takes on the guise of a bad TV sitcom. Stone apparently thinks these flourishes are brilliant, but they instead remind one of Woods' work - with Bela Lugosi narrating while stock footage of an unrelated cattle stampede is interspersed.

Acting is universally horrible. Robert Downey Jr. probably comes off best as an Australian news documentarian, but even his work is spotty. Lewis, well on her way to becoming to go-to girl for white trash roles, is dreadful, and Harrelson manages to condescend to equal her every step of the way.

Some people insist the film has a message, but the problem is that Stone makes his point in the first 30 minutes and spends the remainder of the running time sledgehammering it home. The point is not deep and the biggest problem is that Stone the filmmaker seems just as in awe of his murderous amoral central character as the film that supposedly derides their supporters and the society that makes them celebrities. Stone and his film has absolutely zero sympathy for the human wreckage that they leave in their path, which makes both the director and his production more than a tad hypocritical and ultimately pointless.

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Failed Experiment

dougdoepke4 July 2016

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!)

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9/10

Flagrant-Baronessa29 July 2006

Note: This is probably the longest review I have ever written and it mostly deals with the source of controversy surrounding Natural Born Killers, so if you just want a brief summary of why this film is worth watching, skip to the end!

I remember when Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers was released in 1994 and delivered a well-deserved kick up the arse to American audiences. Stone set out to criticize media for its mindless glorification of violence and criminals in the media and did so through a sharp satirical spectacle about two infamous killers-turned-idols, starring the "it" actors of the early 90s.

Unsurprisingly, conservative American families were outraged—disgusted at what was presented to them and saw the film itself as a mindless glorification of violence and criminals as opposed to criticism. Indeed, they were so outraged that, when teen-fans left their Oklahoma home to go out east and shoot fellow Americans, parents blamed Natural Born Killers for having inspired the shootings. Oliver Stone was left with blood on his hands, while more murders were being linked to his masterpiece. Lawsuits were filed; cases were tried and reinstalled, until finally they were dismissed in Louisiana in 1998.

The reason I bring this up again, after so many years, and so many more violent films later, is because Entertainment Weekly has published a list of The 25 Most Controversial Movies of All Time and Natural Born Killers is ranked as #8. Now, I don't want to knock Entertainment Weekly as they report on reality, but when a film like NBK gets a high ranking as 8, they should be called Entertainment, Weakly. My point is, rather, that this is a film that dealt with such an important, realistic issue that it should never have been controversial in the first place. So why was it?

The reason for this high ranking, I assume, is the ending of the film. Instead of opting for your typical, clichéd cop-out in which the "good guys" win and the "bad guys" are punished, Stone lets Mickey and Mallory Knox—the glorified killers—get away with precisely everything and ride off in their car on the highway. This was what lead to a public outcry and what caused an anti-violence film like Natural Born Killers to be mistaken for a pro-violence advertisement.

Firstly, it is my opinion that audiences who need everything to be carefully spelled out for them in a film in order to get the message and morals right are probably devoid of morals in the first place (no offense, Crash (2004)). So because Natural Born Killers did not have a perfect righteous ending with a "good guy" shaking his finger and telling you that this was unacceptable and having the bad guy repent their crime, some people took this as homage to serial killers. This fills me with concern for your average movie-goer.

Secondly, Natural Born Killers shouldn't have inspired this much controversy because, while it often exaggerates to get its message across, it is realistic to the core—and why should realism be labeled controversial? Isn't it just the opposite? Having violence in a film is a realistic portrayal of the world today. Having media glorify violence is even more so, because that is what is happening. By making Mickey and Mallory Knox into infamous symbols ("If I were a mass murderer, I'd be Mickey and Mallory!" one worshipping teen tells the TV camera team), Stone is parodying reality. He is parodying the idea of media turning serial killers, like Jeffrey Dahmer, into celebrities. Dahmer was on the cover of new magazines more than once, for example. The prison interview with Mickey is based upon the Charles Manson interview with reporter Geraldo Rivera. The story told on "American Maniacs" about Mickey killing a cop after asking him for directions is taken almost verbatim from a story made up by J. Edgar Hoover in the 1930s about bank robbers Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker in an attempt to try to silence the couple's growing fan base. In other words, no one can argue that Natural Born Killers is not a realistic portrayal of the media's response to criminals.

Now thirdly, it is my guess that the film struck a little too close to home when it opened and therefore attracted unfair criticism. It pointed to things that were too familiar with audiences. Take the famous sitcom scenes of Mallory's family, featuring hammy acting, clown-like sound effects and canned laughter. All the stylistic elements were present –it was just the content that was overblown; Mallory's father made lewd suggestions and it all culminated in a ruthless killing spree. Yet, somehow, it was still funny because it was so close to the average sitcom. This was Stone's intention. In prison, when Mickey is being interviewed on national TV, the film cuts to a simple black and white image of a typical American home. The family is sitting around watching the interview, glued to the television like mindless zombies—the very same people who hated this film. That's biting irony.

So, controversial? I have watched Natural Born Killers many times and cannot see anything else than a satirical masterpiece. I also do not think that exaggerating images or scenarios is overkill – I think exaggerating morals and 'happy endings' to get a point across is overkill. Natural Born Killers had the perfect balance and was meant to be taken tongue-in-cheek. It doesn't glorify violence; it shows how desensitized the media and the public have become to it. And it does so with flair and fury.

9 out of 10

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8/10

bowmanblue14 July 2021

Back in the nineties, and Quentin Tarantino's name was the epitome of 'cool' and 'hip' film-making, the prospect of another of his films coming out (after both the much hyped 'Reservoir Dogs' and 'Pulp Fiction') was almost too much to handle. Yes, there were many who pointed out that - technically - 'Natural Born Killers' was not actually one of his films were he did all the writing, producing and directing, but, as it has his name attached, none of us cared.

Then it got banned. Apparently, it was too violent for the general public and its depiction of serial killers randomly executing innocent people would turn us easily-influenced viewers into the monsters we saw onscreen. All it really did was make us want to watch it even more.

Back then we were forced to watch it on, er, 'less official' means which certainly could never live up to the experience of seeing it on the big screen, or even on your own TV (properly). Therefore, everyone enjoyed it - despite it being blurred, juddery and a terrible picture. No one dared say anything other than it was a 'masterpiece.'

Luckily, these days, 'Natural Born Killers' is available to buy on most good DVD sellers online and you can see it in all its glory (albeit on the small screen). Plus, without the 'mythos' surrounding its release, you can relax, sit back and actually watch it with a little more of a neutral head on. Yes, it's still a good film, but probably not one you'd watch often.

Two killers: Mickey (Woody Harrelson) and Malory (Juliette Lewis) go on a killing spree and that's about it. Yes, there are plenty of people who see the story as some type of satirical take on the American way of life and try to read 'deeper' meaning into the story. It's one of those films that probably hard to truly recommend. Yes, there's plenty of grotesque and uncalled for violence. And, rather than Tarantino directing, Oliver Stone takes the chair and gives us one hell of a psychedelic trippy ride, using every directing trick in the book in order to give the feeling that you've been taking every illegal drug possible before you sat down to watch.

There's plenty of famous faces on the cast list, not just the main two, but expect Tommy Lee Jones and Robert Downey Jr also chewing up the scenery, really giving us 'cartoonish' impersonations of cold-hearted - yet supposedly good - characters.

Is it a masterpiece? Well, it's definitely not your normal 'Classic Hollywood' film. If you're in the mood for something very different to everything else that's on Netflix these days then it will certainly make you think Just make sure you have a strong stomach when it comes to excessive violence, swearing and generally bad people getting away with things.

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4/10

nonconformist29 May 2005

This is not what I expected. I thought it would be violent but instead it was just boring. A seemingly endless barrage of visuals that are just plain silly. The point of romanticizing crime is beat to death and then beat some more. This movie is living proof that outrageous cinematography cannot overcome a sever drought of ideas. The fact that so many people enjoyed this film frightens me. It's like the emperors new clothes. Do they really believe what they say? I like movies that are different but this is just junk. I watched for about and hour and realized I was being used. I didn't think it was going to get any better. Don't waste your time unless you feel the need to fit into the crowd

Why was Natural Born Killers so controversial?

What did Tarantino think of Natural Born Killers?

What was the point of Natural Born Killers?

Is Natural Born Killers based on Charles Starkweather?