NATURAL BORN KILLERS
A film review by David Gregory Platt
Copyright 1994 David Gregory Platt
Oliver Stone's NATURAL BORN KILLERS is both less and more than you'd expect. Less in that the violence is not of the disgusting gore variety that it's been trumped up as, and more in that disturbing images and ideas are presented at a quick-cut, insane pace.
The story is already famous, or infamous. Micky (Woody Harrelson) and Mallory (Juliette Lewis) Knox are two young, charismatic outlaws who kill everybody that gets in their way (leaving, of course, one behind to tell who did it). Stone catches them midway into their spree, with a freakish sceve in a roadside diner. From there, the carnage continues, with several road sequences in which Mick and Mallory do little more than slaughter people and profess their love for each other.
The pair's story is taken up by Wayne Gale (Robert Downey Jr.), host of the fictional trash TV show "American Maniacs" (think Geraldo with a touch of Rupert Murdoch). Having used tasteless remakes of the two's crimes to great ratings reward, Gale inadvertently makes them media heroes, with a worldwide following (one montage shows mall kids from major capitols praising the pair as icons, lampooning the global MTV mentality).
In addition to the TV parodies, the movie is filmed in several different stocks, from 16mm to regular film. Intercut are flashes of bizarre footage (everything from the famous eye from 2001 to cheap-looking monsters and demons) that sometimes comment on the action, sometimes not. As well, the killers' odyssey through the southwest is not always presented literally, but with strange rear projection behind their vintage Dodge. These techniques recalls Stone's own JFK, in which the inserts and effects were used as visual aids to otherwise dull pieces of evidence. Here they are less coherent, and seem to emerge from some bizarre shared mindset of Micky & Mallory.
Micky & Mallory are eventually tracked down by superstar cop Jack Scagnetti (Tom Sizemore), who understands the psychopaths far too well. The capture is presented as an event predetermined by the media, eerily predicting the O. J. Simpson hysteria (the film does feature an obligatory O. J. reference, but no doubt this scene predates it.)
The final sequence, with a live interview by Wayne Gale and a subsequent prison riot, all shown live during the Superbowl, tends to drag a bit. Although Tommy Lee Jones adds color as a sneering warden, the prison scenes are bogged down by the endless carnage and Micky's speech explaining his philosophy. It's hard to tell whether or not the diatribe is satire: it's insane, but not too off the mark, and Stone films it in the same solemn fashion as Kevin Costner's final remarks in JFK. Maybe Stone is lampooning himself.
The multimedia technique is disorienting, but it's not new. To anyone who's ever seen a Guns 'N' Roses video, it's nothing you haven't seen before. It is so unrelenting that the movie's flow suffers for it In his "Entertainment Weekly" review, Owen Glieberman suggested that it denies Micky and Mallory "'reality.'" However, without this "reality," there's no point where you can latch hold and get into the story, so instead it simply goes over you like an endless barrage. What suffers most are the TV parodies. (There's nothing new to them, either: stylistic parodies date back to MOBY DICK) The American Maniacs sequence is shot through with pointless cuts to the black- and-white footage. It also ruins the illusion in the infamous sitcom scenes, in which Mallory's horrific past with her abusive father (Rodney Dangerfield) is presented on garish video and with a laughtrack.
Dangerfield's performance leads the pack in a movie with some strong, over-the-top satirical acting. Dangerfield unleashes the brutality that has been hiding in his comedy for a long time, and essentially makes you forget the stunt casting apparent in the choice. If Scorsese's watching, he should consider him for a mobster role. Similarly, Harrelson erases all memories of his kindly persona on "Cheers." Juliette Lewis is good as always (although she may be in danger of being typecast as a female Travis Bickle type), and Tom Sizemore plays Scagnetti as a perverse Scorsese thug (if that's possible). Tommy Lee Jones, representing a more banal evil than the Knoxes, plays the warden as a hardened refugee from a '70s crime-as-big-social-problem movie. Russell Means, as an old Indian Shaman, provides a small bit of gentle humour in the only natural, human performance in the movie. The only weak performance is by Robert Downey, Jr., who hits too many wrong cartoonish notes.
(A note about the music: instead of a musical score, the movie features a mix of popular songs from Leonard Cohen to The Specials, supervised by Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor. The practise is not as revolutionary as it's been touted, and has been done to much better effect in GOODFELLAS, among others.)
NATURAL BORN KILLERS is the first "critic-proof" art movie since 2001. Simply put, those who don't itlike will be told they "don't understand it." However, unlike 2001, it's the director's ineptness, not his skill, that makes it hard to understand.
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