Natural Born Killers
Directed by: Oliver Stone.
Written by: Quentin Tarantino (story), David Veloz (screenplay), Richard Rutowski (screenplay) , Oliver Stone (screenplay).
Actors: Woody Harrelson, Juliette Lewis, Robert Downey Jr., Tom Sizemore, Tommy Lee Jones.
Released: 1994.
MPAA Rating: Rated R.
Length: 119 min .
Action .

Brief outline (no spoilers):
Mickey Knox (Woody Harrelson) and Mallory Wilson (Juliette Lewis) are two crazy teens who run away and start on a trail of murder and mayhem. They travel across America on route 666 and kill for fun. They soon get famous in the media and always leave one victim alive to tell the story. Their story is glorified by the unscrupulous reporter Wayne Gale (Robert Downy jr.) while the sadistic cop Jack Scagnetti (Tom Sizemore) tries to catch them.

Personal opinions
The movie is really a critique of the media, and the double moral shown. First they seem to be shocked and oppose violent events and in the next moment the media feeds on the event and without such events the media could not exist.

The script was originally written by Quentin Tarrantino, but Tarrantino has made complaints about the final outcome of this movie. He was not happy with Oliver Stone making substantial changes to it.

Good
The movie is esthetically beautiful in a crazy sort of way. The movie is filmed in a variety of formats, from 16mm, black and white, surveillance camera, handheld camera to regular movie film. It also uses a lot of strange colors like pure green or red. It also uses a lot of archived movie clips from various sources. This creates a very chaotic and may be seen as confusing. This is done intentionally to underline the chaos and cut & paste culture portrayed in the movie. If you do not see this, the movie may be confusing. It most certainly is not a standard movie that follows the rigid Hollywood recipe for how a movie should be. You leave the movie with a feeling of unrest.

Aside from all the talk about what the movie is “really about� it has a lot of crazy action, and mayhem. And it builds up around a spectacular ending.

Tommy Lee Jones plays a funny character and it brings some humor to it, and the movie needs it.

Bad
This is not Stone’s best movie and it is not the worst. The violence is a part of the life for the people in the movie. All the violence makes it difficult for a lot of people to accept it, since it is argued that it is a speculative movie that wants to sell the violence. And that is part of what the movie critiques.

You do not get really close on any of the characters or sympathy for any of them; you sort of get the view from outside on all the characters. Again this could be how it is in the “media-lized� world, where you get to know everybody from their TV appearance.

Bottom Line
Young people will like it for the violence, old people will be shocked.
Rating: 7/10 (where 10 is the best).