Customer Reviews

Natural Born Killers - Oliver Stone Collection [VHS]

5 star:		(120)
4 star:		(32)
3 star:		(13)
2 star:		(17)
1 star:		(48)

 

 

"Natural Born Killers" is not about glorifying violence; it's a chilling parody of the American fascination with violence. The quick changes from color to black and white and back again, interspersed with animated sequences, point up the satiric nature of the movie.

Mickey and Mallory, very well played by Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis, are two killing machines without heart or soul or conscience; their only redeeming virtues are their love for each other. They aren't meant to be sympathetic characters and they're not, but Oliver Stone's direction makes them pale in depravity besides some of the other characters -- the sadistic warden, the despicable detective and his morbid fascination with Mallory, Mallory's nauseating, sexually abusive father, and above all, Robert Downey's superb characterization of the media pimp who feeds off blood and gore.

The last scene in the movie, of Mickey and Mallory on the road with their two children, and Mallory about to deliver a third at any minute, underscores the whole message of the film; violence feeds on itself and begets yet more violence. Those viewers who were most upset by the movie missed its message. "Natural Born Killers" is a brilliant, disturbing depiction of the shallowness of American culture at the end of the 20th century.

Judy Lind

Oliver Stone's "Natural Born Killers" is not just a movie, it is an experience. It is a wild, dark ride that serves as a study of today's culture and it's fascination with violence. This movie is not so much about the killers, but about how the killers capture the public. The screenplay is masterfully structured with moments of vicious rage, deepness, dark comedy and powerful visual images. The film is hypnotically watchable due to the great mixing of different film formats, camera angles, colors and the breathtaking cinematography of Robert Richardson. "Natural Born Killers" is a great study of where our culture is going. Stone is a genius of cinema, one of the greatest directors there has ever been. This movie is effective, provocative, feverish and driven. It's electrifying. In fact, it's not as violent as you may think it is. It's the break neck speed it goes at and it's intense feeling. "Natural Born Killers" is both intense and brilliantly nightmarish. It's disturbing, as it should be. This serves as a slap on America's face, to wake it up. "Natural Born Killers" is a masterpiece, as Roger Ebert said: "Seeing this movie once is not enough."

Natural Born Killers is easily the best movie to come out of this decade. It is surreal, highly intelligent, sarcastic, and like the Exorcist, seems to have some kind of power beneath the simple plot. The actors and actresses all perform perfectly as their characters, Tommy Lee Jones rightly over-the-top, and Woody Harrelson a subtle, evil Mickey Knox. The cinematography is simply amazing, pure amped beauty, the psychological screens behind the action, the desert, and my god, the violence of the riot... perfect.

There's something going on in every sceen of the movie, like Owen at the beginning in the diner, or pictures of Mallory's father when she's with the gas station attendant. The movie was deep (sorry about the cliche) like in the whole Native American sceen where the word "demon" and "too much t.v." flash on the muderers chests. Later in the movie we hear more explictily about the demon in Mickey's amazing television interview with Wayne Gayle.

But the main reason about why is movie is what it is and somehow more, is its message. It isn't subtle about it either. The media has gotten way too important, fed itself fat on society's rich blood, and yet we scream for more, we want our blood sucked. Every day our lives are permeated with violence, violence in movies, television, the news, and we crave it. Natural Born Killers was a wake up call, and a choatic brilliant one at that, turning a warped mirror around and pointing it at the audience. You see those people worshipping Mickey and Mallory at the outside the court sceen, that is us, that is who we are, and this movie tries to get us to wake up and see that.

Oliver Stone is one of the most skillful of all film directors. His style is to take a topic, and make it an epic event while throwing every technical cinematic trick available for your consumption. He's almost never boring, with the exception of his pro football movie. He's usually irritating, especially when he freely admits that much of his "JFK" is fiction. But he also usually has something relevant to say, and has never done it better than with "Natural Born Killers".

The movie concentrates on how our country makes celebrities out of nasty people, and was prophetic in that is was in production before the whole O.J. Simpson media bash. It "tells the tale", to use a term in the movie, of two young lovers who leave a string of bodies across the country. This is not that out-of-bounds, as Charlie Starkweather and his girlfriend did something like it a somewhat less bloody pace over thirty years ago.

We see that instead of the revulsion that one should feel for these people, the media finds the story profitable, and they become sensations. [Love] sells, so they find themselves on the cover of "People" magazine. In an immortal quote from the movie, "fans" state that "If I were a mass murderer, I'd be Mickey and Malorie". I frankly don't find any of this THAT far from reality, as there are people today who regard Charles Manson as a pop cult figure instead of the pathetic human that he is.

All of this is surrounded by brilliant performances and editing that just blows you away. Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis are perfect because they show the capacity for violence, have charisma, and also project that they are actually pretty stupid losers having a ball with their celebrity status. Rodney Dangerfield and Tommy Lee Jones are also priceless as Lewis' father and the warden of the prison.

This is a film to be watched over and over and studied. The Director's Cut is better, as they not only throw in previously cut scenes, but Oliver Stone specifically tells you why they are important.

... and this is a nearly perfect film. The script, the acting of all characters, the direction and editing, and all the ensemble elements of perfected cinema are here. It's a virtuosic depiction of "our" insatiable taste for the violence we hide ourselves from, from birth to hospice care, our sofa-bound celebration of vicarious violence. It's an indictment, not an entertainment, and if you enjoy it too easily, with too much adrenalin pumping, you ought to know that it's YOU being indicted. Likewise, though it has lots of moments of absurdity that would be comic in another film, it's not funny, not in any manner that makes you smile or chuckle. In fact, if you laugh out loud too often at this film, you might need therapy.

A couple of young white Southern Americans, Mickey and Mallory, go on a murder rampage along historic Highway 66. Their first victims are Mallory's grotesque abusive parents, but then they slaughter 52 people at ransom, including a number of police, in a scant few weeks. Their love and lust, indistinguishable, are image-saturated with hallucinogenic drugs. They are captured, surviving a hail of bullets, and imprisoned. A year later, amid a frenzied prison riot, they escape again, leaving dozens of corpses strewn around the penitentiary. These simple cinematic thrills are tumbled together with news footage of actual mass and serial murders, hyper-violent scenes from other films and TV shows, and cartoon animation suggestive of violent computer games. As I said, the editing is Perfect, a ghastly gory splurge of senseless gratuitous violence. That alone would not distinguish Natural Born Killers from the dozens of bloodbath thrillers that are marketed in the USA every year. But the killers, including the psycho cop Scagnetti who tracks Mickey and Mallory, are different from most. They get more pleasure from killing than most. In fact, they justify their killing by the 'sense of being alive themselves' that they derive from it. It's all "fate" anyway, they offer; those who get killed are those who somehow need killing.

What distinguishes Natural Born Killers from being a simple 'thriller' is its portrayal of the sensation-hungry media profiteering from their violence, stirring up a feeding-frenzy of adulation for the "Bonnie and Clyde-like" killers. As the film industry, and before it the dime novels of the 19th C have taught the world, America loves a raffish outlaw and despises the public employees -- cops and jailers, with the defined-benefit pensions -- until one of them is shot by a black person. Wayne Gale, host of a TV reality show devoted to serial murderers, follows Mike and Mallory and glamorizes them, sets up an interview with Mike in prison which triggers the explosive riot, commits himself psychologically more and more to them, adapts their Ayn Rand objectivity toward the value of Life, and eventually finds himself cravenly cringing in front of his own camera as Mike explains why the thrill of killing even extends to mystical converts.

Yes, a perfect film! And it happens to have been one of the most controversial films in American history, lambasted by critics for inciting precisely the sociopathic violence it patently wants to excoriate. Look on wikipedia! You'll find, as a full article, a "List of Alleged Natural Born Killers Copycat Crimes', several of which were very likely just that! Can a film that portrays as hellish and decadent the unrepentant adoration of violence by the American public really be held culpable for inciting more violence? How then can you tell the truth, if the truth results in more guilt? By the way, the film doesn't "pick on America" alone; the glee of TV audiences in Japan, Europe, and everywhere at the carnage is also shown. But let's not equivocate; this is a film about the shame of America, and it's a potent statement.

Just don't let your kids watch it!

THIS IS NOT THE DIRECTORS CUT.

I give the Directors Cut 5 stars, and ordinarily I would give even the edited version at least 4, but when I purchased "The Oliver Stone Collection" edition of this movie, I assumed the movie contained therein would be the Directors Cut. IT IS NOT.

The deleted scenes are great to have, but those scenes were also contained in the old beat-up VHS of NBK I owned years and years ago and lost. Attempting to replace it (my DIRECTORS CUT version), I bought this one on DVD. I was extremely disappointed that this is not the version I had come to love.

Very little of the movie is deleted, but purists seeking to obtain the TRUE version of this movie should stay away. Remember when Robert Downey Jr. gets a hole shot in his hand? Gone (or at least cut away far faster than it's supposed to). Remember when Tommy Lee Jones gets his head mounted on a stick? Gone. These are just two examples.

For those of you specifically seeking the Directors Cut, this is not it. I love this movie to death, but I was looking for something specific and did not get it. Very misleading labeling, if you ask me.

The saying that a picture says more than a thousand words only appears as a mirage for many in our contemporary society where a constant feed of information waters down the message of a single picture. Through voices over the radio, myriads of images flash from TV and the easily accessible Internet that can even generate any desired interactive multimedia. The bombardment of information makes it difficult for many viewers to focus their attention on one single source, as an overload of sensory stimuli enter the brain through vision and hearing. Soon can the spectators of a media source probably also smell and touch what they see. It becomes an impossible task for many viewers to process the abundance of incoming information, which never allows enough time for reflection and contemplation. Instead, today's youth are overmedicated for a vast number of cognitive disorders such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and personality disorders due to problems with skills such as thinking and mood swings. Oliver Stone addresses this issue through his controversial Natural Born Killers where two young people drive down a highway on a murderous rampage.

In the opening, Stone displays a number of shots that have been edited together in order to create a threatening sensation, as a shot of the desert supercedes the image of a wolf. A quick cut to a close-up of a rattle snake is followed by someone pouring a cup of coffee that quickly changes to a blood red scene of a train that is running through the desert. A sequence of an eagle, which is a symbolic image for the United States, leads the viewer eventually to a dinner where the waitress quickly jumps through a number of television channels. The different TV channels have an iconic lead up from the 1950s when the television become prominent in every home to present time where a demon is grinning on the screen. A titled pan, suggests that something is not right with situation, and displays the waitress taking the order of Mickey (Woody Harrelson) who orders a slice of key-lime pie. The waitress comes on to Mickey and Mallory (Juliette Lewis) insultingly brushes off her attempt while strutting up to the jukebox. Shortly after hell breaks loose in the small diner along the desert highway where Mickey and Mallory, also known as M & M, ruthlessly kill all, but one who will spread the word of their act at the diner.

The question is why Mickey and Mallory did what they did at the highway diner. Instead of dealing with their identity, the Natural Born Killers try to answer the question through a lengthy dissection of their lives that stretch from the time they met until the very final scene. Empirically the story stirs up several issues including sensationalism, i.e., the basic notion of limiting experience to sensations from the senses as a source of knowledge, as filtering consistent facts or extensive contemplation requires cerebral effort to achieving knowledge. Instead people have been taught through the media to rely on feelings, as the ultimate truth, and the images of the TV most often pleads to the instant emotional senses. Consequently, the viewer learns that they do not have to think, which requires cerebral effort, as they merely have to lay down in their La-Z-Boy and be spoon fed the images of the TV screen.

A paradox rests within the image, as every image consists of both an instant emotional sensation and a deeper meaning. However, in order for the audience to achieve some understanding of the deeper meaning in an image the audience's attention has to maintain on the image for enough time for the viewer to begin contemplation. Education, of sorts, is also necessary in regards to reading images and to begin pondering, as the image has some links with society and to find this link individuals might need some acquired knowledge to find the cue that leads to a deeper meaning. Parents are the foundation for a child's educational development, and Stone ironically depicts this family in a dysfunctional Cosby manner where the unemployed father, performed by Rodney Dangerfield, only cares for Mallory in a selfish, physically, emotionally, and sexually abusive manner. Both Mallory and Mickey know that something is wrong with the situation, and the approach they choose to end this terrible family lifestyle is with murder. Mallory appears as a mirror image of her father after she has drowned her father in the fish tank by displaying her instant gratification of her deed by jumping up and down. It is clear that her father did not care about any consequences, as she continues in his footsteps without regard for others except Mickey.

Natural Born Killers depicts a brutal satire of our contemporary society where instant gratification seems to be the need in the public and media gladly provide it through their network stations, as commercials keep the dollars flowing. Oliver Stone points out that the problem does not rest within the TV stations, parents, or the children, but in the society as a whole. There is no magic silver bullet that could cure this cerebral apathy, as only individual endeavors to strive for deeper reflection and contemplation could raise the society beyond the need for instant emotional gratification. On occasion, people demonize, maybe due to a sensation such as anger or their personal desire for their own 15 minutes of glory. It could also be due to small aspects of society where they might not have gained full understanding of the issue through contemplation of consistent information. Amidst the frenzy generated by the media, the media tries to maximize their revenue, as they provide more fuel to the sensational experience. Wayne Gale (Robert Downey Jr.) does exactly this by pleading to people's feelings as he tries to get the ratings to soar through an interview with Mickey.

Technically Natural Born Killers offers a cinematically stunning experience, as it mockingly uses tilted camera pans and vertical cuts to induce more emotional turmoil. This enhances the message that Stone tries to send to the audience through Quentin Tarantino's adapted story. In order to provide a film that does not confuse the audience about his intentions to display a mockery of the media's sensationalistic abuse and the viewer's perception of media he uses a heavy load of satire backed by wacky cinematography and short animation sequences. The cast also displays intentionally exaggerated performances that support the use of satire, which in the end comes together into a wickedly brutal parody with disturbing imagery presented through excessive violence and symbolic imagery.

A flamboyant mess of a movie with moments of smirking depravity and vile intent. Mickey (Woody Harrelson) and Mallory (Juliette Lewis) are the lionized mass murderers who escape their half-parodied white trash backgrounds to eventually be captured, only to escape from prison. Stylized grandeur overwhelms the watcher; effective scenes like the killers' brief awakening to humanity with an Indian mystic is lost in a tirade of foul collages and flashing memories. Here the director is indulging his talent but missing the point in doing so.

This review is partly in reponse to the review by "Technopagan."

The first DVD release (2000) of Natural Born Killers is in the original theatrical aspect ratio. The problem with the original DVD release is that it is not enhanced for widescreen TVs (i.e., anamorphic). This means the film was encoded on the DVD to display within a 4:3 shape using letterboxing on the top and bottom to preserve the proper aspect ratio of the film.

(Sidenote: That does NOT mean it is a full-frame version with the top and bottom cut off to fake a widescreen image. That is an entirely different issue misunderstood by consumers who don't understand the way movies are filmed.)

Non-anamorphic DVDs appear fine on a regular TV, but they were not designed with widescreen TVs in mind. They appear "stretched" horizontally. Most widescreen TVs have modes to squish or stretch the image into the proper shape, but the results are never satisfying.

In the early days of DVD, non-anamorphic DVDs were common since consumers did not yet have widescreen TVs. I know this because I've had a DVD player since late 1997 and a widescreen display since 2003. Anyone who buys a widescreen TV will soon discover a few of these "not enhanced for 16x9 displays" DVDs in their existing collection.

By the time Natural Born Killers (NBK) was finally released on DVD in 2000, it was inexcusable to make it non-anamorphic. To add injury to insult, it was released again almost exactly a year later as part of the "Oliver Stone Collection" and enhanced for widescreen TVs. My only conclusion is that they knew they would re-release it and wanted to give people even more reason to buy (or rebuy) the newer disc.

Indeed, the "The Oliver Stone Collection" release is the version you should buy, especially if you have a widescreen TV or plan to get one eventually.

In sum, in both versions you see the film as it was shown in the theater. The only problem is that the first release was not designed with widescreen TVs in mind.

The listing for this product is WRONG! For some reason, this is the R-RATED theatrical cut and not the UNRATED Director's Cut that appeared on DVD and VHS so many years ago. All of the deleted scenes from the DC release are contained on this disc (only in 480p standard-def), but this IS NOT the definitive version of the film. I'll have to buy this Blu-ray again when they release a DC version. The packaging for this Blu-ray release is gorgeous. It's like a hardcover book with the disc and several pages about the stars and the process of making the movie. If you MUST watch NBK in HD right now, it'll do the trick (though much of the film was shot in 16mm and grainy video anyway)- and in a pretty package- but not without a sacrifice of 2 minutes of important scenes. BUYER BEWARE!