Natural Born Killers

[Guest HopeSpot]

How good is this movie? It's so fired up with killing humor and violence that it shocked a jaded Generation X audience awake.

 

It really reminded me of the old NWO tee-shirt advertisments with the bizzare imagery and the audio repeating itself out of no where, definetly one of Stone's finest movies.

 

It's a shame that this movie will forever have the Columbine stigma hanging over it. Eric Harris and Dylan Pleabold where two very disturbed little boys, this movie does glorify violence and Mickey and Mallaries destructive lifestyle, but it's not going to warp anyones mind unless your a slave to the power of suggestion. I hate to get off topic here but it is the absolute responsibility of the parent to monitor the material that there child is exposed to.

 

Fuck the critics, enjoy the movie.

[Guest dreamer420]

I agree dude.  It is a very good film and a wicked satire on the American Media.

[Guest Annoyed Grunt]

I thought the movie was above average, but nowhere as good as some of Stone's other films.

[Guest teke184]

There were a few problems with the film:

 

1.  The director and several of the stars were drugged out of their skulls while making it.  Oliver Stone has had run-ins with the law over smoking hash, which isn't a biggie.  However, IIRC, Tom Sizemore and Juliette Lewis were addicted to heroin during the filming and Robert Downey Jr., as always, was a rehab nightmare.

 

2. This lives up to Stone's comment about being "the most expensive student film in history".  They use so many types of media to make this film (8mm, 30mm, video, animation, etc.) that it's VERY hard to watch.

 

3. Stone is inconsistant in the point he tries to make with the film.  Instead of making a satire about rampant violence in society, he made a film that glorified it instead (perhaps unintentionally)

[Guest HopeSpot]

"The director and several of the stars were drugged out of their skulls while making it."

 

I fail to see how that's a problem, everybody involved turned in a near perfect performance . And a fun little fact about drug abuse: more people use marijuana in my high school than alchol and tobbaco combined. A couple of movie stars shooting heroin while on a movie set is far from anything new.

 

"They use so many types of media to make this film (8mm, 30mm, video, animation, etc.) that it's VERY hard to watch."

 

I loved the off the wall camera movement and audio repetition, it's really what made the movie look different from the pile of pop shit that was out at the time. I mean god forbid that a director try anything exciting and original, right?

 

"Stone is inconsistant in the point he tries to make with the film.  Instead of making a satire about rampant violence in society, he made a film that glorified it instead"

 

I thought every point that Stone made was well illustrated. It's so hard for teens to rebell against anything today because there is no moral majority anymore , so what do the kids do? They embrace two heartless, pychotic serial killers. The movie did glorify violence, but it still worked as a satire. I loved the shots of the 1950's families running up to the thier televison sets during the prison gunfight.

 

But hey, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong, and it be a terrible tradegedy if I was.

[Guest J*ingus]

Personally I absolutely hated it.  I didn't like the acting, the direction, the writing, or the general themes of the movie.  I thought it glorified serial killers, instead of satirizing them.  (For serial killer satire, try Man Bites Dog.)  

 

But even I gotta admit the fake sitcom with Rodney Dangerfield was pretty funny.

[Guest teke184]

There's a limit to the amount of camera tricks that someone can do before the audience either gets upset or starts throwing up.  It's something I immediately start bitching about when the subject of Oliver Stone comes up because I was going cross-eyed and almost throwing up when I went to see Any Given Sunday in the theater.

 

Personally, I'd have put the cutoff at about 10 or 15 different mediums, but Stone went all-out and did about 30 different mediums.  That's WAY too many for a film that was supposed to be mainstream, especially when you're cutting about 10 different mediums together within 2 minutes.  IIRC, the prison riot used almost ALL of the different mediums and got very hard to watch.  

 

 

As for the drugs, I just used Stone as an example, but had said that hash isn't much of a problem.  The BIG problem is having three of your four main actors screwed up on heroin or coke as it influences all the performances in the film.  The only reason that Stone got the quality of performances that he did is that the film is so over-the-top and violent that coked-out rants, vegitating in a corner, and psychotic behavior wouldn't seem out of place in that film.   It didn't help safety on the set, which probably explains how Juliette Lewis broke Tom Sizemore's nose during the filming of a scene late in the film.

[Guest Anorak]

Oliver Stone has never been a very subtle filmmaker but i think that worked to his advantage with NBK.The film's style reflected the modern obsession with serial killers and violence which the media exploits so readily.I didn't like it when i first saw it but now i think it's one of Stone's better films.Jingus was right about there being films which are probably better satires of the subject(Man Bites Dog was a great example) but NBK stands out as a uniquely American vision of the whole violence/media/society debate.

[Guest HopeSpot]

"Personally I absolutely hated it.  I didn't like the acting, the direction, the writing, or the general themes of the movie.  I thought it glorified serial killers, instead of satirizing them."

 

Yeah I'd rather watch Titanic, The Fast and the Furious, The Phantom Menace, or any other pile of shit that insults my intellegince for two hours straight than a movie that actually makes me follow a plot, think independently, and throws about 20 fun and original film making concepts at me every two minutes. You guys are so great, I'm going to rent American Pie 2 right now!

[Guest J*ingus]

Yeah I'd rather watch Titanic, The Fast and the Furious, The Phantom Menace, or any other pile of shit that insults my intellegince for two hours straight than a movie that actually makes me follow a plot, think independently, and throws about 20 fun and original film making concepts at me every two minutes

 

Damn right I'd rather watch Titanic.  I liked that movie.  I didn't like Natural Born Killers.  I did not like the plot it made me follow, and I did not find its filmmaking concepts either fun or original.  Simple as that.

[Guest Brush with Greatness]

Stone butchered Tarantino's original Natural Born Killers story.  At one point, it was obvious that the movie was a satire but Stone took out many of the comical elements.  He then decided to go so over the top with everything (as he always does) and butchered the original intention of the story furthermore.

 

His directing is terrible.  He was onto a good thing with the direction in Platoon and the jumpy back and forth everywhere shit works for that sort of movie because it conveys the image of being in a war.

 

He has failed to realize however that not every movie needs 1 million camera tricks to be well directed.  There should be a seizure warning on the box.

 

If you want to see a good way to use a few different film mediums watch Run Lola Run, not this pile of shit.

 

Overrated.  The only people that like the movie are those that think "guns and killing are cool. they made it look funny when they killed that poor innoncent guy".

 

4/10

[Guest Hit Squad]

I enjoyed the movie to an extent. As a satire it was okay. I absolutely hated the way the movie glorified violence. My friends loved the movie for the violence and satire and I only agree with them on the satire part. There's little sense of humanity in the killers and the movie portrays that as being cool.

[Guest HopeSpot]

"Overrated.  The only people that like the movie are those that think "guns and killing are cool. they made it look funny when they killed that poor innoncent guy"."

 

You are so cool I wish I was just like you. I seriously doubt if you've seen this movie, the herky jerky camera and different direction made every scene seem important, it made the viewer feel like you where inside Mickey's mind.

 

It's a sad fact that the irony of NBK is lost on people, I mean look at what happened at Columbine? The shooting at Columbine was on live televison and I'm sure that your average familys with the 2.5 kids all sat around thier televisons and watched real people being killed just like in NBK. Mickey was on the cover of Time and so where Harris and Pleabold. And you're going to sit there and tell me that NBK doesn't work as a satire?

 

The movie glorifies violence and yet still works a satire, romance, and a comedy. The love story in NBK is more compelling, realistic, and emotional than any lovey dovey overated Titanic piece of shit I've ever seen. Stone created a masterpiece with NBK and like all true geniuses his work was shit on by the critics of his time.

 

9.5/10

[Guest J*ingus]

the herky jerky camera and different direction made every scene seem important, it made the viewer feel like you where inside Mickey's mind.

 

It didn't make me feel like I was inside Mickey's mind, it just annoyed me.  

 

And you're going to sit there and tell me that NBK doesn't work as a satire?

 

It didn't for me.  

 

The love story in NBK is more compelling, realistic, and emotional than any lovey dovey overated Titanic piece of shit I've ever seen.

 

Love story?  These are two psycopathic murderers with no redeeming values.  I didn't want to see them fall in love & have a kid.  I want them executed.  

 

like all true geniuses his work was shit on by the critics of his time.

 

Roger Ebert, the foremost critic of our time, has given Stone's movies four-star ratings on several occasions, including Natural Born Killers.  How is that shitting on it?

[Guest HopeSpot]

"Love story?  These are two psycopathic murderers with no redeeming values.  I didn't want to see them fall in love & have a kid.  I want them executed."

 

If you look beyond the fact that thier pycopathic killers Mickey and Mallarie have an "I'm here for you no matter what happens" relationship with 90's relaism thrown in. It's a thousand times more emotional than two pretty 16 year-old teens pretending like they know what love is.

 

Oh yeah, a whole 2 people in this thread liked NBK and for every real critic that liked it there were ten that hated it. I like Ebert even if he is a fat virgin. He isn't afraid to speak his mind and give a movie the kind of review it deserves even if it means going against the grain (ie. Natural Born Killers).

[Guest Dmann2000]

How can he be a fat virgin when he has a wife who's given birth to his children?