Natural Born Killers - The Nature Channel

Dec

3

Natural Born Killers - The Nature Channel

≡ Category: Action, Not Worth Your Time, Satire, United States |
≅ Written by: Michael Kydonieus

Country: United States
Genre: Action/ Satire
Director: Oliver Stone
Year: 1994

Rating:

NOT WORTH YOUR TIME

Who knows what Natural Born Killers was really about back when it was a script by Quentin Tarantino? Thanks to writer/director Oliver Stone, it’s now a dissertation about the depravity of our culture, which has been churning out junk culture and serial killers like Stuart Whitman for the past 50 years or so.

Nothing to worry about, sez Oliver. All this depravity is just tooth and claw nature tearing through the fragile fabric of civilization. Only one problem with that cynical interpretation, Oliver. Animals don’t kill and rape for the hell of it.

At it’s core, Natural Born Killers is bullshit. Maybe in his heart Oliver Stone knew that. Maybe that’s why he’s drowned his film in an impenetrable torrent of dutch angles, shock cuts, assorted film stocks, animation, and other film school tricks.

There’s another problem with Natural Born Killers. Stone’s leads, Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis, not only lack charisma, they are anti-charisma. I dunno, if you are going to focus a two and a half hour film on a romantically linked couple who go on an unapologetic killing rampage, it might help if the killers were charming. I gather from the dialog that Mallory (Juliette Lewis) is supposed to be attractive. Instead, Lewis is the epitome of a trailer trash skank.

Frankly, Natural Born Killers is a chore to sit through.

I really have only two good things to say about Natural Born Killers:

1) Robert Downey Junior is fantastic as an Australian yellow journalist who interviews the famous serial killers Micky and Mallory. Through sheer force of will and expressiveness, Downey creates a compulsively watchable character out of whole cloth.

2) Oliver Stone manages one absolutely brilliant scene, which imagines how Mickey first met Mallory, in the form of a sitcom. In an inspired piece of casting, Mallory’s abusive father is played by none other than Rodney Dangerfield. Of course, much of the credit for the success of this scene goes to the original writer, Quentin Tarantino. I’ve read his original script and Stone changed very little of the sitcom scenes. The choice of a sitcom format enables the filmmakers to capture the tawdriness of the environment, and yet balance the ugliness with rough humor.

The rest of the film is a mess.

Casual filmgoers should probably give Natural Born Killers a miss. However, given the wildly experimental nature of the project, and how influential it’s been, students of film should probably force themselves to watch it, at least once.