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'A very dark and disturbing film' came straight to my mind when I had finished watching it! It is a very powerful, amazingly filmed story that has received lots of complaints, release issues and other problems. I do feel that the film perhaps has inspired more people to commit these crimes like some of the moments of brutality, death and punishment would be demonstrated nowadays. I mean, violence in our world are inspired by violent films unfortunately so got to put up with it. Anyway, Natural Born Killers really took hold of me about half way through and I thought 'this could be another 5-star film' but during the last half of the film, I just lost the grip of it a bit and drifted it down to 4-stars.
It is about the misadventures of Mickey and Mallory: outcasts, lovers, and serial killers. They travel across Route 666 conducting psychedelic mass-slaughters not for money, not for revenge, just for kicks. Glorified by the media, the pair become legendary folk heroes; their story told by the single person they leave alive at the scene of each of their slaughters. Woody Harrelson's performance as Mickey Knox was amazing! The character is based on the infamous real-life spree killer known as Charles Starkweather. As a child, Mickey was abused by both his parents and witnessed his father commit suicide when he was ten. Mickey is shown throughout the movie as an efficient killer, with knowledge of firearms and knife throwing. It is also shown that he knows how to kill with his bare hands such as the time in prison when he demonstrates killing a man by breaking his neck during a yoga session. Juliette Lewis was awesome too as Mallory Knox! After Lewis's breathtaking powerful breakthrough performance in Martin Scorsese's Cape Fear, she once again delivers a performance that is a bit different but shows that she was back in the early 90s a great actress! As a child, Mallory suffered physical, verbal, emotional and sexual abuse at the hands of her father. Mallory devotes herself to Mickey, stating he's her one true love. Mallory often tells stories and fantasies about her and Mickey living in paradise. Mickey often quotes, "That is poetry". Out of the two, Mallory seems to be the more aggressive, showing signs of being an uncontrolled psychopath with zero empathy for the people she kills. One example is when she and Mickey kill their last victim, Wayne Gale (Downey Jr.). Mallory continues shooting Gale repeatedly after he is dead. Tom Sizemore, Robert Downey Jr. and Tommy Lee Jones were pretty awesome too!
Unlikely duo Oliver Stone and Quentin Tarantino have together crafted together something gruesome and something extraordinary. Also, I would say that they have crafted an influence to criminals to commit these kind of crimes seeing as the characters within the film actually enjoyed murdering those people. Quentin has produced a pretty cool story too as well as gruesome obviously.
Overall, Natural Born KillerS is a very gruesome, dark, psychologically terrifying film that I perhaps wouldn't watch again but did really enjoy watching.
8/10
