Natural Born Killers (1994)

For today's film, we have decided to stay in the 1990's for a film that I can't believe took me 26 years to watch even after doing a challenge similar to this one four years ago. Before 1994, Oliver Stone was known for always having an anti-government/conspiracy feel to his films from Platoon all the way to Born On The Fourth Of July. In 1994, he decided to take a story written by Quentin Tarantino and her turned it into the film Natural Born Killers. The film stars Woody Harrelson (Zombieland: Double Tap) as Mickey Knox and Juliette Lewis (From Dusk Till Dawn) as Mallory Knox, two people who came from traumatized childhoods that meet and the universe explodes as they fall in love and go on a crazy psychotic killing spree together across most of America, but how long will it last as they are hunted by hot shot detective Jack Scagnetti (Tom Sizemore)? The film also stars Tommy Lee Jones (The Fugitive) as Warden Dwight McClusky, Rodney Dangerfield (Back To School) as Ed Wilson, Edie McClurg (Fired Up) as Mallory's Mom, Russell Means (Pathfinder) as Old Indian, Robert Downey Jr. (Iron Man) as Wayne Gale, Balthazar Getty (Lord Of The Flies) as Gas Station Attendant, Steven Wright (The Emoji Movie) as Dr. Emil Reingold, Jared Harris (The Crown) as London Boy, and Everett Quinton (Pollock) as Deputy Warden Wurlitzer.

First, I can't believe that I didn't know that Tarantino wrote the story, but after watching this film I should have known that. I definitely wonder what it would be like to be tripping while watching this film because it just goes all over the place artistically as it switches from black and white to color and all the footage of monsters and old 50's families like it was a Rob Zombie music video. It was almost like I was on an acid trip and everything was flashing from back and white to color then all of a sudden some cartoons or old footage would come on to almost give some semantics as to what was going on. Rob Zombie did the same thing years later in House Of 1000 Corpses and it's an OK tactic, but I thought it was too much for me in this film. However besides that one element of the film, I actually thought that the strongest point of the film was definitely the acting because Woody Harrelson did a fantastic job in this film that if you didn't believe he was a great actor before, you check this one out and you are sold. One of the funniest things was that while I loved Robert Downey Jr's performance overall in the film as the overly obsessed reporter (a la Geraldo), his Aussie accent kind of was a little weak in my opinion. The film was a giant message to the media who were obsessed with covering serial killers and all of the tropes associated with it that they are what is ruining America. Nonetheless, I am going to give the film an B+ for a final grade because the acting was not enough to boost it to an A- even though Harrelson gets an A+.