Natural Born Killers 2/5
I am a huge fan of Woody Harrelson. I always have been, so ever since I saw this on the Wal-Mart $7.50 shelf about seven years ago I have had it on a “to watch list,” so when I saw it on HBO, I decided now was the time to watch it (or rather, TiVo it and watch it a month later, as was the case).
This movie chronicles the trip of Mickey and Mallory, two serial killers, as they go around the west killing…serially. It’s got blood, sex, and foul language. And not much of a story.
This is the first Oliver Stone directed movie I’ve ever seen (though I worked on a stage production of Talk Radio) and so I didn’t know what I was getting into, though I saw that Quentin Tarantino listed as a writer and I, for the most part, liked his work in the 90’s.
This was a very strange movie to watch in terms of writing a review. Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis were very good in their roles. Robert Downey Jr. was so convincing I wasn’t sure it was him. Tommy Lee Jones was fantastic, the best part of the second half of the movie. The design choices were breathtaking, the lighting in the prison was beautiful and the effects when Mickey and Mallory were in the desert talking were breath-taking. If I were only rating the technical aspects and performances, I would rate this movie a 5 out of 5 stars.
I hated the story, though. I thought it was pointless. There was a message of “love conquers all” trying to break out from under the surface, but it drowned before it made it out. There was some sort of indictment of the media and television, but it seemed that the person spearheading that in the design department watched too much TV and didn’t have the attention to bring that idea to fruition. There was an interesting psychological background to the characters, but it got only briefly sketched in and then abandoned. We can see why Mallory would kill, but not really why Mickey would.
Overall: It was a beautiful piece of pointless fluff. 2 out of 5 stars, a Netflix rating of “I didn’t like it.”
