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Natural Born Killers (1994)
Innovative but Indulgent: A Desperate Cry for Attention
Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers is a strange film. It's shot strangely, it's edited strangely, and its characters behave strangely. Strangest of all is Stone's direction. The director has been clear over the years that the film is intended to be a critique of media glorification of violence. Yet Natural Born Killers delights and revels in the very violence that it is supposedly criticizing. It's a film that elicits strong reactions; you love it or you hate it. I'm one of the few who lies somewhere in the middle.
Natural Born Killers is a messy movie, and I'm referring to the director's cut, not the theatrical cut (which I've never seen). It has a chaotic and creative energy that is alternatively exciting and exhausting. The editing choices often seem nonsensical, almost as if Oliver Stone wanted the film to have a randomness to it. Though on the flip-side, the use of cuts and color is just as often incredible, with the brief animated segments and shot composition being the two things I like most about this movie.
I can't stand Oliver Stone. He's pretentious and just by looking at his filmography, you can tell that he loves controversy. Ironic that a film in which the intended purpose is to dissuade the media from objectifying violence was created by a filmmaker who objectifies media attention; especially to the violence in his films.
The Good: A great looking movie, Natural Born Killers is a visual delight if nothing else and never boring to look at. Also Rodney Dangerfield gives a chilling performance and it's a real shame he never did any other dramatic roles.
The Bad: For a film with lofty thematic ideals, the characters are shockingly shallow. Beyond a few Freudian excuses to explain away their tendency towards violence, Mickey (Woody Harrelson) and Mallory (Juliette Lewis) remain essentially the same characters throughout the film. Now I'm not saying that every film needs dynamic characters who change or learn something by the end of the story, but we the audience should be constantly learning more about these characters as we follow their story. That doesn't happen in Natural Born Killers, and it's likely one of the reasons many moviegoers struggled to sympathize with the pair, despite Stone's hamfisted attempts to use police violence as a means of eliciting audience sympathy. Speaking of the police, Tommy Lee Jones and Tom Sizemore are so cartoonishly evil as the bad prison warden and corrupt police officer that it's almost comical. This movie needed more complex heroes and villains to work; and that's probably why the intended message just doesn't sit well with people.
The Ugly: The film's treatment of Mallory's childhood sexual trauma via a sitcom segment (complete with laugh track) is not inspired, it's extremely offensive and distasteful.
I wouldn't recommend this movie to anyone but editors and die-hard film buffs. Natural Born Killers is indulgent filmmaking at best, and at worst, a desperate attempt by a has-been director to elicit controversy; no matter the cost.