Rent Natural Born Killers (1994)

Some good, some bad, a mixed up film - Natural Born Killers review by RD

The bad part is the overall film, the story is half hearted and looks like it was written on a napkin over lunch, and it is very dull and poor. If you watch it for the story then it's dull.

The good part is the incredibly imaginative cinematography, with a huge range of innovative and brilliant filming tricks. The music is well chosen and adds to each scene beautifully.

There are a lot of odd techniques used, like switching between black and white photography to colour and then back again, and insertion of animated parts, all done quickly and in keeping with each scene. The editing is sharp and keeps each scene going at a superb pace. I tend to think this is the young Mr Tarantino flexing his directing skills.

Quite a mixed up film, and if you love cinema then viewing this is a must if only for the ingenious use of the medium.

Satirical Messy & Cartoonish - Natural Born Killers review by GI

Cult classic or style over substance? Oliver Stone's controversial indictment of a world obsessed by media and commercialism remains an interesting if disjointed and uneven film. Basically a modern satire that looks at the ease at which society becomes hooked on a low brow diet of biased news, TV and materialism. But it is a film that certainly is visually demanding with fast edits, colour palette changes, the mixing of clips from other films and TV to create a smorgasbord that assaults the senses like an LSD trip. With colour to represent emotions and black & white to show inner thoughts. The narrative is simple really. A young couple, Mickey (Woody Harrelson) and Mallory (Juliette Lewis) are thrust together having the mutual background of family abuse and go on a killing spree across country. On their road trip of murder they are pursued by a sex crazed cop (Tom Sizemore) and a narcissistic TV journalist (Robert Downey Jr). They get caught and are imprisoned where they are controlled by an effete Prison Warden (Tommy Lee Jones) who allows the journalist to interview Mickey. He has other plans of course and begins a violent break out, causing a riot, freeing Mallory and bloodily shooting their way to freedom and onto family bliss! This is not a film that you can really like. It's often gratuitous in its violence for effect long after that effect is no longer needed and whilst it has its entertainment value it's a film that loses any power it may have exerted on first viewing making further viewings rather dull. This leaves the film like a big adult cartoon and whilst Quentin Tarantino, on whose story this is based, is said to have not liked it it certainly has his directorial stylings all over it. A film to say you've seen but ultimately a failed experiment.