Natural Born Killers by Oliver stone, is a twisted love story in a horror film genre. It is shot using many animations and images to show the devil of the two lovers as they go on a killing rampage. It shows horrific murderous scenes in a humorous way, almost taking the mickey out of social problems and scenarios, such as domestic violence and rape, as in the scene at Mallery's house with her fathers violence and inappropriate sexual advances on his daughter. These very heavy issues are shown as a comical studio shot TV series with candid laughter at very inappropriate moments. We have all experienced the annoyance of candid laughter that always seems to occur during moments that we do not find remotely entertaining.
The story seems to have been inspired by the Arthur Penn film 'Bonnie and Clyde', which follows two lovers on a saga of killing and steeling and ultimately leads to their death.
The images splashed on the screen at random such as in the car window enforce the unstable minds of the two murderers, drawing the audience into the psychotic mind set of a murderer and drug addicts. It is at times quite silly and becomes more unbelievable as the story goes on or as Mickey and Mallery become more brainwashed in their addiction to killing. The prisoners escaping prison with a whole TV crew and the fact that the TV crew members become murderers themselves is a little unrealistic, however this works for the film giving the message that the media are the devils and influences our minds and are essentially killing us. Stone comments on the stupidity of the human race and society.
As reviewer John J. Puccio says
"He utilizes overkill to criticize overkill. Then he has the gall to suggest that love can overcome everything". (published Jun 11, 2008, http://www.dvdtown.com/reviews/natural-born-killers/6001).
Stone was not concerned with capturing the reality of the life of a murderer rather the psychology behind their intentions and reasonings. The film encompasses quite an extensive and famous cast which does justice to it such as Woody Harrelson who plays Mickey Knox who actually does come from a violent background, with his father having been in jail etc, he is likable in a disturbing way. Juliette Lewis plays Mallery Knox, their chemistry on screen is believable. Even though their love moments happen during shooting riots and scenes of death the audience can identify with the love and their devotion to each other, we want them to escape and be together.
Stone asks us to enjoy the violence and draw out our own psychotic minds. Stone captures the crazyness with use of a crazy mixture of techniques such as coloured filters; out-of-focus lenses; MTV editing; grainy, handheld, home-movie sequences; camera shots from every angle; mixed black-and-white and colour photography; animated cartoons; fast and slow motion; multiple flashbacks; laugh tracks; voice-overs and film-overs to name a few... It is a mix of every film technique and has elements of other films in cinema history such as film noir.
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