Natural Born Killers (1994)

**A brutal criticism of our society, in which the film itself takes advantage of what it is criticizing.**

Oliver Stone is not one of my favorite directors. What happens when he teams up with Quentin Tarantino? This. The script written by Tarantino is an authentic carnage that massacred not only a random number of extras but also popular culture.

Ever since the mass media appeared, alarmist and high-sounding voices have occasionally emerged to warn of the enormous dangers they pose. Over the decades, criticism has echoed around the appreciation for what is violent or has sexual connotations. I agree with some, if not most, of the criticisms, although I cannot accept people being considered stupid enough to start carrying out massacres or sexual orgies just because of what they see on certain TV shows. The vast majority of people do not allow themselves to be influenced in this way, and those who allow this already have, a priori, an imperative need for psychological support.

The film starts from this premise to create a bizarre story in which a terrible couple of killers, bloodthirsty and sadistic to an extreme point, end up being transformed into authentic “pop” superstars, with legions of fans, interviews and a public frenzy around them. their violent acts, and the heartless hunt that the police carry out against them. I appreciate the satirical tones given to the film, which shows a society where everything that in a normal world only deserves to be execrated is worshiped. However, by taking this path, it is part of the “problem” and is so extremely violent that it bothers any human being with a minimum of compassion.

Everything in this film has Tarantino's touch, implicit in a latent hysteria present in almost everything: the direction is raw, rude, the soundtrack is intrusive, and the editing uses brutal, fast cuts and scenes that an epileptic would not be able to handle, including sudden cuts of black-and-white films, TV news and other materials. The visual effects are of excellent quality, but eye-catching. The fast-paced action transforms the film into a race through a world of extreme violence, histrionic and unpleasant characters, and incessant noise. The dialogue is written to be shouted rather than spoken, and the heavy use of swear words may make some people's ears ring.

There is a very strong cast in this film that deserves to be highlighted for the superb work it gives to the audience. Woody Harrelson is convincing and appropriately sadistic in his role, which is one of the most brutal and impactful of his career to date, and Juliette Lewis, despite not being particularly “sexy” as required by the character, is believable, intelligent and pleasantly naughty. Robert Downey Jr., who was still far from the stardom he achieved in recent years, is truly devastating in the final part of the film and Tommy Lee Jones, an always competent veteran, is suitably crazy, as if he no longer has a sense of reality and had no fear of abusing the powers with which he was invested. Tom Sizemore ends up being the most restrained actor among those that the script most favored.

I am a little suspect to talk about of this one - was on my bucket list for ages and finally I could see the director's cult version of it. It simply wasn't anything that I was expecting... and it was way more. Normally this would be a 3 star max, but I took in account the movie editing and the 30y gap.

Maybe if I watched it 30y ago it would be a different sense - it deal with the over glorification of serial killers by (old - and now we have again that trend) media shows and that many serial killers have difficult family backgrounds with child abuse (but not all turn to killers and ice-versa, I think the main dialog here is about mental disease in the family).

If no one said to me that it was Oliver Stone Behind the camera's simply I couldn't tell. It looked simply a Tarantino movie, and guess what? The screenplay was of him, and "heavily" (?!) edited by Oliver Stone.

Sorry for the fans but I am not one of the Tarantino Movies, they rely too much in violence and puns to hide little if any talent for screenplays. I expected way more of the screenplay after Oliver Stone revised it.

Some aspects of the movie can be said positive: the acting of the Knox (Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis) as a modern version of Bonnie and Clyde and Robert Downey Jr. as the show presenter.

The cinematography by the talentful Robert Richardson (that works constantly with Tarantino, but with other huge names as Scorsese and Oliver Stone himself) is frenetic and psychedelic and so is the editing that is huge in between scenes, done by Hank Corwin and Brian Berdan (Tree of Life, Don't Look Up, Vice, etc) and the music score is perfect by Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails (especially Cowboy Junkies "Sweet Jane" and Jane's Addiction ones).

Otherwise even the tone of violence is just comic by today standards - but the visual of the killer couple is very aesthetic and some scenes like the opeding and the wedding ones.

I would give it a 7.0 out of 10.0 / B