Review of Natural Born Killers (1994) by Edith N — 11 Jun 2012

It Doesn't Work as Satire If You Seem to Agree With Its Stance.

Part of the problem may be that I really just don't think that Oliver Stone is hugely talented as a director, and satire is not easy. Somehow, people think comedy is easier than drama, and it isn't. With satire, there's the added difficulty that you have to make sure a majority of people will get the joke. Not everyone will no matter what you do, of course. That's just how it works. Someone always misses the joke. However, my issue here is not really that I didn't get that it was satire. I did. I just thought it failed at it, which is a different complaint altogether. This also starts from a Quentin Tarantino script, though I'm given to understand that it's greatly changed from the way he wrote it. However, I have serious problems with both Stone and Tarantino, and I don't think combining them is a good way to get your point across, no matter what point it is you think you're making.

Mickey (Woody Harrelson) and Mallory (Juliette Lewis) Knox are kind of a cross between Starkweather and Fugate combined with Bonnie and Clyde. They start by killing her parents (Rodney Dangerfield and Edie McClurg), then go on a love-fueled killing spree across the Southwest. They are possibly the first media-savvy spree killers; it is said that they always leave someone alive to tell the tale. And indeed, their story is being told by [i]Hard Copy[/i] equivalent [i]American Maniacs[/i], as hosted by Wayne Gale (Robert Downey, Jr., with a bad and inexplicable Australian accent). At one point, they decide that they should take mushrooms together, and they stumble into the hogan of "Old Indian" (Russell Means). Mickey shoots him while in a hallucinogenic delusion, and they stumble out into the night. Mallory is bitten by a rattlesnake, and everything culminates in their arrest and then a bloodbath inside the prison where Wayne Gale is interviewing Mickey.

Much is made of the visual style of this movie, and I do believe that Oliver Stone was working very hard not to make a typical Oliver Stone movie. In that, he certainly succeeded, though it's also true that his very '60s sensibility is apparent in almost every frame. However, I really thought he was trying a little too hard. Rodney Dangerfield is said to have been very uncomfortable about his scenes, where he verbally and sexually abuses Mallory among the trappings of a sitcom. My thought is that, if you're making Rodney Dangerfield uncomfortable when you ask him to do something, you should maybe listen. I saw what Stone was going for in that scene, but it didn't work for me. Very little of what he was doing worked for me, and I was reaching the point where I would have killed for just a nice medium shot taken at ninety-degree angles. There is literally no scene in the entire movie wherein the camera is straight, and it got extremely wearing after a while.

The irritating thing is that I both thought Harrelson and Lewis are perfectly cast and hate them intensely. I don't just mean I have no sympathy for the characters; I actually do have a certain amount of sympathy for Mallory, at least. I very much wanted her to get counseling for her history of systematic abuse. She had been ill-used by society, and no one seemed to care. Not even Mickey, frankly. But no; my point here is that I really dislike both actors. I'm inclined to skip movies starring either of them, simply because I don't much want to watch them doing things. No matter what those things are. And seeing them having sex is much worse. Now, of course, I really do think that they are both cast very well in their roles. She becomes a ridiculously unlikely sex symbol, and that works best because she's an unattractive woman with a shrill voice. He always seems stoned, even when he isn't. And neither seem to have much regard for the real world. Again, this is the actors, not the characters, but it works well for the characters.

I do think that there is a certain unpleasant obsession with serial killers in our society. I think we tend to glamorize criminals. And, okay, there's a certain amount of hypocrisy from me in saying that, because I know insane amounts about Ted Bundy and Charles Manson. However, I have no liking for them as people. They are evil men. (Well, Ted was.) I would be considerably happier not knowing about them because there was nothing to know. I would rather that Sharon Tate and Lynda Healy and the others had lived long, healthy lives. I certainly would not have been one of those idiot women wearing my long, dark hair parted down the middle at Ted's trial. Perhaps, though, the reason this movie doesn't work for me is that I don't buy it when the movie tries to show Mickey and Mallory as a joke of society. I believe that Tarantino and Stone really do imagine themselves in that RV we see at the end, riding into the sunset. If you believe that, the satire fails.