Classic Movie Review : Natural Born Killers (1994)
In 1994, Oliver Stone was more or less the equivalent of what Christopher Nolan is to us today. A mainstream, but thoughtful director who’s every film was an event for adults who liked serious movies. He had Platoon, Talk Radio, Born on the Fourth of July, The Doors, JFK, immense movies that all hit within the span of ten years. Natural Born Killers was supposed to be his game changer. The movie he would be reminded for. But it landed flat on its face and Stone’s career never quite recovered from its failure.
But Natural Born Killers wasn’t bad. It was before its time.
The movie tells the story of Mickey Knox (a young and dashing Woody Harrelson) and Mallory Wilson (a blooming Juliette Lewis), damaged American youth who fall in love and embark on a nation wide killing spree. Their endeavor is initially supposed to be a revenge against a country and a culture that never gave them a chance at happiness without resorting to a brutality that has broken them in the first place, but it quickly turns into a media Christening for two new hot sensations: the sexiest killers in America.
Natural Born Killers was much better than I remembered it to be. One reason why this film never got the love it deserves is that it’s dealing with a problem that was emerging at the time and that became much better understood by the general public afterwards. Another reason why Natural Born Killers isn’t appreciated enough is that few people still today are willing to admit that the topic its dealing with is actually a problem. Namely, media’s obsession with promoting the most lurid and provocative stories.
Murderous couples aren’t that original within the creative economy. It’s a simple and easily replicable concept, but it sells. After all, Bonnie Parker & Clyde Barrow’s names are still remembered today and have become shorthand for mischievous romance. The genius of Natural Born Killers lies in how they’re tirelessly portrayed through a series of mediated filters that are both inside and outside the narrative’s economy: the I Love Mallory sitcom, Wayne Gale’s interview or sometimes just random image distortions.
The opening scene of the movie is a good example of what I’m talking about. Mickey and Mallory walk into a diner and really create a scene around their presence. Mallory walks to the jukebox and starts dancing for restaurant patrons hoping to choreograph a confrontation. It is also shot like a music video and features clear heroes and villains. Everything is more important than the violence Mickey and Mallory commit. What matters is the story they tell themselves and, most important, the story the movie is telling you.
A story of sexy broken kids taking their vengeance over the world. Vengeance is always a sexy story people love to tell themselves.
It’s impossible to get the straight story out of Natural Born Killers because the straight story couldn’t possibly hold up to the saccharine fantasy of broken youth making themselves whole with murder. Oliver Stone tells a tragic story that you’ve a thousand times, but he tells it in such a willingly disingenuous way that it feels immediate an inevitable. It was something difficult to appreciate in 1994 because we all had the same single perspective on culture, but it makes a lot more sense in a post-internet world.
Natural Borns Killers’ depiction of media sensationalism occurred in the infancy of the economy of attention, where television channels fought one another for audience and had to one-up each other in terms of luridness. Mickey and Mallory found their place in the world by offering that luridness and violence, which finally got them the love and attention that they’ve been craving for their whole life. Now, there’s a life-affirming quality to their triumph, but you know… it’s a triumph in the blood and guts of innocents.
Make of that what you will, but I (and maybe Oliver Stone) will judge you if you think Natural Born Killers is romantic and inspiring.
*
Well, there you have it. Natural Borns Killers aged like fine wine against all odds. There’s also an organic, pre-CGI quality to it that makes it endearing and pleasantly anachronistic to whoever might stumble upon it in 2023 and beyond. It’s not the most subtle thing ever written, but it offers a confronting vision of our own consumerist habits. Not in a preachy way, though. It just makes you question the angle through which every piece of information is provided to you. A surprisingly powerful and pertinent throwback.
