Natural Born Killers is a 1994 American romantic crime action film[2] directed by Oliver Stone and starring Woody Harrelson, Juliette Lewis, Robert Downey Jr., Tommy Lee Jones, and Tom Sizemore.
The film is based on an original screenplay by Quentin Tarantino that was heavily revised by Stone, writer David Veloz, and associate producer Richard Rutowski.
Some critics praised the plot, acting, humor, and combination of action and romance, while others found the film overly violent and graphic.
Following the pair's murder spree is self-serving tabloid journalist Wayne Gale, who profiles them on his show American Maniacs, soon elevating them to cult-hero status.
Mickey and Mallory become lost in the desert after taking psychedelic mushrooms, and they stumble upon a ranch owned by Warren Red Cloud, a Navajo man who provides them food and shelter.
"[5] The "sitcom" representation of Mallory's household results in a visual dichotomy between her "life as she imagined it should be (replete with an oppressive laugh track eradicating any scary sense of ambiguity)" and the "grim truth of it.
"[7] Natural Born Killers was based on a screenplay written by Quentin Tarantino, in which a married couple suddenly decide to go on a killing spree.
David Veloz, associate producer Richard Rutowski, and Stone rewrote Tarantino's script, keeping much of the dialogue but changing the focus of the film from journalist Wayne Gale to Mickey and Mallory.
[11] Initially, when producers Hamsher and Murphy had first brought the script to Stone's attention, he had envisioned it as an action film; "something Arnold Schwarzenegger would be proud of.
[13] Coloring Stone's approach to the material, and contributing to the violent nature of the film, were the anger and sadness he felt at the breakdown of his second marriage.
"[16] At the time, Harrelson was primarily known for his comedic performances, namely his role on the sitcom Cheers, and Stone was compelled to cast him against type.
[17] Stone cast Lewis for a similar reason, noting that, despite her success as portraying a defiled teenage daughter in Cape Fear (1991), he felt she could "pull off white trash, too.
[20] Rodney Dangerfield, primarily known as a stand-up comedian, portrayed Mallory's rapist father and was allowed by Stone to rewrite all of his own character's lines.
According to Tom Sizemore, during filming on the prison set, Stone would play African tribal music at full blast between takes to keep the frantic energy up.
[12] While shooting the POV scene wherein Mallory runs into the wire mesh, director of photography Robert Richardson broke his finger and the replacement cameraman cut his eye.
"[29] Kolker comments that, unlike such films as Bonnie and Clyde from which Natural Born Killers draws influence, "from the very beginning... the viewer is forced into a dual situation, neither one of which allows easy access to the main characters.
[31] Concurrent with Stone's preoccupation with television as both a visual and thematic reference point, portions of the film are narrated through parodies of popular television series, including a sequence presented in the style of a sitcom about Mallory's dysfunctional family (titled I Love Mallory), a parody of I Love Lucy.
In its opening weekend, Natural Born Killers grossed a total of $11.2 million in 1,510 theaters, finishing first at the US box office.
The website's critical consensus reads, "Natural Born Killers explodes off the screen with style, but its satire is too blunt to offer any fresh insight into celebrity or crime – pummeling the audience with depravity until the effect becomes deadening.
"[39] On his television show, his partner Gene Siskel agreed with him, adding extra praise to the scene featuring Rodney Dangerfield.
Janet Maslin of the New York Times wrote, "While 'Natural Born Killers' affects occasional disgust at the lurid world of Mickey and Mallory, it more often seems enamored of their exhilarating freedom.
"[41] Hal Hinson of The Washington Post voiced a similar concern, saying "'Killers' is intended as a gonzo critique of the mass media and, by extension, of the bloodthirsty legions of couch potatoes whose prurient taste guarantees that the garbage rises to the top of the charts.
Maslin continued, "for all its surface passions, Natural Born Killers never digs deep enough to touch the madness of such events, or even to send them up in any surprising way.
Berardinelli noted that the movie "hits the bullseye" as a satire of America's lust for bloodshed, but repeated Stone's main point so often and so loudly that it became unbearable.
[44] At the 1994 Stinkers Bad Movie Awards, Harrelson was nominated for Worst Actor but lost to Bruce Willis for Color of Night and North.
Writing for The Guardian, Charles Bramesco argued the film's rebuke of the media as responsible for violence does not hold up to current times.
Bramesco wrote, "With every public bloodbath [in the news today], discourse inches closer to accepting their root cause as a combination of lax gun laws and an undercurrent of psychosis endemic to those feeling marginalized from society.
Stone’s inquest may have been a shock to the system at the time, but his tracing of that psychosis back to the evils of television scans as borderline reactionary to present-day sensibilities.
"[32] In contrast, critic Owen Gleiberman said the film still "captures how our parasitical relationship to pop culture can magnify the cycle of violence...'Natural Born Killers' was the movie that glimpsed the looking glass we were passing through, the new psycho-metaphysical space we were living inside — the roller-coaster of images and advertisements, of entertainment and illusion, of demons that come up through fantasy and morph into daydreams, of vicarious violence that bleeds into real violence.”[10] Natural Born Killers was released on VHS in 1995 by Warner Home Video.
[68][69] When the film was first submitted to the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), employees told Stone they would give it an NC-17 unless he edited it.