Review of Natural Born Killers (1994) by Diego T — 17 Feb 2014

It's painful to watch failed potential, but in the reverse, it's also painful to see a movie try so hard to be something it's not and fail miserably. Natural Born Killers, the divisive and controversial Oliver Stone film that some people love, some people hate, and nobody should really care about. This movie wants so badly to be clever in a Pulp Fiction kind of way, even going so far as to make subtle references to it (don't think I didn't notice the "honey bunny" line), but no amount of style can save a movie from a generic plot, incoherent cinematography, bad dialogue, and simplistic characters.

Natural Born Killers stars Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis as Mickey and Mallory, a pair of Bonnie and Clyde rip-offs who go around the west killing people and robbing stores and killing people and killing people and killing people. Seriously, a LOT of people die in this movie (50 or so just in the first hour), but unlike other, better films like Django Unchained or Die Hard, the deaths serve practically no purpose. I'm all for gore and violence-- sure, pile up as many bodies as you want. But the more bushels of people that die, the more you're going to have to try to engage the audience's brain. And unfortunately, this movie inevitably falls flat on its face by taking the complete wrong turn and depicting the two mass murderers as twisted geniuses somehow, Boondock Saints-style. And what's so funny about this is that the fans of this movie don't seem to understand that it's supposed to be ironic, and that the movie actually rejects the killer's philosophy... or so it seems. Nonetheless, the gratuitous violence in this film is not worth sitting through for the occasional high point.

The acting is very inconsistent. Harrelson is electric as Mickey, but Lewis lets him down slightly (he's clearly the better half of the pair). Robert Downey Jr. co-stars as a TV host who interviews and follows Mickey and Mallory endlessly, and for a while it seems like the film might end up getting some semblance of cultural satire under its belt. But its thesis about the media is delivered far too heavy-handedly, and in a very preachy fashion. Besides, it's not like this isn't anything we've seen before. Okay, shock media is bad.. what else is new? Also, Downey just can't do a fucking British accent to save his life. Meanwhile, Tommy Lee Jones crosses the line between "hamming it up" and "driving the audience batshit crazy" with his performance as a mildly psychotic prison warden, a cross between Gary Oldman in The Professional and Willem Dafoe in the aforementioned Boondick Saints. One would think that such a comparison would warrant at least some agreeable cheese, but one would think wrong.

One of the most notable things about this film is the cinematography, which some have called "mind-bendingly surreal." Well, that's somewhat true. Natural Born Killers does have visuals worthy of an acid trip. But that doesn't make them good. The movie switches between color and black-and-white at the drop of a hat, and also goes the extra mile by splicing in random images of demons, fire, and any random shit that Stone wanted to throw onscreen during practically every sequence. This is all supposedly to mimic the effect of flipping channels on a TV (oh look, another biting satire of the media, isn't this movie clever), but it just comes across as chaotic and repulsive. In short, the stylish choices that this movie makes probably sounded good during brainstorming, but when they're actually realized, the only acceptable response is "What the fuck is happening?" Some moments are pure genius-- The scene in which the movie suddenly takes on a sit-com tone (complete with laugh track) is both subversive and hilarious-- but for the most part, the little jabs at the media and American culture don't really leave a mark.

Final Score for Natural Born Killers: 4/10 stars. This is a love it or hate it experience for most people, but I fully understand where both sides are coming from. I'm pretty indifferent to it myself, but I am disappointed that it wasn't able to do anything better with such a talented cast. It's made up of good parts, but sadly the movie never quite coheres, which really is a shame. Oh, you know how I like giving out extra points to movies with inventive titles? Well, this one gets a point for that. "Natural Born Killers", the title, is intriguing and awesome. But Natural Born Killers, the movie? Don't ask.