Natural Born Killers

Natural Born Killers (1994)

Genres - Action, Adventure, Drama, Crime, Thriller, Comedy  |   Sub-Genres - Crime Drama, Media Satire, Road Movie  |   Release Date - Aug 26, 1994 (USA)  |   Run Time - 119 min.  |   Countries - United States  |   MPAA Rating - R
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Review by Robert Firsching

Natural Born Killers is a vicious, gory, disgusted kick in the pants to America, as Oliver Stone seemingly throws the culture's sickness back in its face, screaming "You like this kind of stuff? Here!" In a country which made Bonnie and Clyde heroes and slobbered over bloody gloves and horrifying 911 calls for over a year, how do you make this kind of satire crazy enough? Stone tries to do so by taking every facet of the crime/glamor obsession to its extremes. Mallory (Juliette Lewis) and her psycho sweetheart Mickey (Woody Harrelson) commit over 50 murders and become big stars, with Stone tracing every step of the mad journey to celebrity in a multitude of styles including color, black-and-white, hand-held Super 8, and even cartoons. At one point, he presents Mallory's obligatory "unhappy childhood" as a demented sitcom, with sexually abusive dad Rodney Dangerfield spouting abuse to big laughs from a delighted audience. It's all just fodder for the media machine and the bloodthirsty public, as Robert Downey, Jr. illustrates as a camera-obsessed reporter whose quest for fame has blinded him to the perversion of what he is doing.