what the film does
two victims of traumatic childhoods, mickey knox (woody harrelson) and mallory wilson (juliette lewis), meet, fall in love, and go on a killing spree across the american southwest. the media turns them into celebrities. wayne gale (robert downey jr.), a tabloid tv host, exploits their story for ratings. the film follows the couple from their meeting through their arrest, imprisonment, and a violent prison break broadcast live on national television.
quentin tarantino wrote the original screenplay, which oliver stone heavily revised with david veloz and richard rutowski. tarantino received a story credit but disowned the finished film. stone shot it in a barrage of formats, 35mm, 16mm, super 8, video, cutting between them at will. the sitcom-parody flashback to mallory’s family life, complete with a laugh track, is one of the most aggressive tonal shifts in any american film of the era.
why this one
the canon has violent films and it has satirical films and it has visually unhinged films. natural born killers is the one where all three dials hit the peg at the same time. it is less a movie than a sustained panic attack about what television does to violence and what violence does to television. the mixed-format editing, cutting from 35mm to 16mm to video mid-scene, is the visual equivalent of channel-surfing through a crime scene. this film was notorious on release. it was named the eighth most controversial film in history by entertainment weekly. it inspired real-world copycat crimes. it grossed 110 million on a 34 million budget despite polarizing reviews. it won the grand jury prize at venice. stone has never made anything louder, and harrelson and lewis have never been more dangerous.
image: letterboxd (baked 27.3)