NATURAL BORN KILLERS
A film review by Michael John Legeros
Copyright 1994 Michael John Legeros
Directed by Oliver Stone Written by David Veloz, Richard Rutowski, and Oliver Stone from a story by Quentin Tarantino Cast Woody Harrelson, Juliette Lewis, Robert Downey Jr., Tommy Lee Jones, Tom Sizemore, Rodney Dangerfield MPAA Rating "R" (Duh) Running Time 130 Minutes
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"Bad! Bad! Bad! Bad!"
-Lewis to Harrelson
NATURAL BORN KILLERS is an acquired taste, make no mistake. Good, bad, *and* ugly, Oliver Stone's hilarious satire on media sensationalism is a kaleidoscope portrait of America as seen through the eyes of someone on a bad acid trip.
Expanding upon the narrative techniques employed in JFK, Stone uses every trick in the book to tell the story of Mickey and Mallory (Harrelson and Lewis), two Bonnie-and-Clyde serial killers who capture the hearts of non-victims all across America.
With his crack team of collaborators and a year's worth of editing, Stone has mixed 35mm, Super 8, animation, rear projection, slow-motion, fast-motion, and video with a dazzling array of stock footage, film clips, and other assorted images. The effect is all at once impressive, overpowering, and, well, aimless.
The multimedia tricks are a hallucinatory treat, for sure, but the director uses them on *every* character in the film--not just Mickey and Mallory. The result is sledgehammer saturation, if you will, that weighs the film down by the end. Simply, it gets old.
Acting credits are superb, though, even if the characters (literally) resemble cartoons.
Harrelson and Lewis are a match made in movie heaven, with Woody exhibiting some scary signs of intelligence. Tommy Lee Jones is a riot, sporting slick hair and Carl Perkins sideburns to play a prison warden. Tom Sizemore has a field day overacting as the bad-cop-gone-worse hired by Mr. Jones to arrange an "accident" for Mickey and Mal.
And give some respect to Rodney Dangerfield, perfectly cast as Mallory's father. He gets his in a hilarious flashback staged as a sitcom.
The story was written by Quentin Tarantino (RESERVOIR DOGS, PULP FICTION) and that's obvious. Bullets fly, body parts are eviscerated, and everyone says f*** every other word. Heck, the fact that this orgy of violence came from a major studio, alone is reason enough to see it! Listen for a great exchange between Jones and Sizemore--including a hilarious off-color Oswald joke!--late in the film.
Rewrites came from three others, including Stone who, undoubtedly, was responsible for a slightly strange midsection involving an Indian mystic and his rattlesnakes. Shades of THE DOORS? Rewriting also added the entire commentary that culminates in a short montage of Amy Fisher, O. J. Simpson, and Tonya Harding landing square on her Buttafuoco.
DATE LINE: Take a sensitive soul to see this with you--you'll have
twice the fun hearing them recoil in shock and horror.
BOTTOM LINE: Violent as all get-out, it's the best head-trip of the
year.
Grade: A-
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