Natural Born Killers. - movie reviews

Commonweal, Oct 7, 1994 by Richard Alleva

Oliver Stone hears America screaming, so he joins right in. His latest film, Natural Born Killers, tries to depict our putative love affair with violence both satirically and horrifically by telling the story of two lovers (Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis) who are spree killers. The first half of the movie displays their monstrous idea of fun and shows how the trash media capitalize on the carnage. The balance of the story focuses on a TV interview of Harrelson in prison conducted by a Geraldo type (Robert Downey, Jr.); the interview goes awry and more blood flows.

In some of his previous movies, Stone used extreme realism to so intensify the violent passages that the result verged on nightmare while remaining basically veristic. This method helped make Salvador (still Stone's best movie), the first half of Platoon, and much of Talk Radio (an underrated work) his finest filmmaking. Natural Born Killers is a departure: an ostentatiously surreal movie from beginning to end, it doesn't employ nightmarishness only at violent moments; the whole work is a bad dream. But, in art, even a nightmare must have its own logic. How coherent is Natural Born Killers? And how penetrating is it?

Shall we excuse the fact that much of what we see on screen flatly defies belief? Of course, the lovers wouldn't be kept in the same (all-male) prison. Of course, the marksmen guarding Harrelson during the interview wouldn't all lounge around inside the same room with him, thus allowing the killer to grab a gun after he's distracted them with a dirty joke. Of course, all of the many marksmen wouldn't be shot down or disarmed without anyone getting off a single well-aimed shot. Of course, the ninety-nine-pound Juliette Lewis, with model-skinny arms and no karate training, couldn't duke it out with a truck driver and, later, an F.B.I. agent and easily win both fights. And this nationally notorious couple, whose faces have been on the cover of People magazine, spend night after night in motels for months without managers and maids recognizing them? (But, when it suits the plot, people recognize the pair instantly.) And should we ignore the fact that other nightmare comedies--such as Dr. Strangelove and A Clockwork Orange--achieve their satirical ends without sacrificing all logic and verisimilitude? (Remember how real the War Room seemed in Dr. Strangelove and how persuasive were all the technical details leading up to the missile strike?) Since Oliver Stone has made a nightmare, shouldn't we cut him some slack in the credibility department? After all, a truly surreal style should cover a multitude of incredibilities.

Trouble is, Stone hasn't achieved any such style. Garishness, certainly, and plenty of high-tech display, but not style. In the opening scene--a slaughter in a greasy spoon--computer technology has allowed Stone to seemingly perch his camera on a bullet as it whizzes toward a victim's skull, and on a knife as it zooms toward another victim's back. The result is, if you'll pardon the word in this context, overkill. It's not horror we feel, or even detachment from horror, but "Gosh golly gee-whizz, how do those Hollywood guys do these stunts?"

There is something thuddingly literalist about all the visual effects in Killers. If Ms. Lewis dreamily speaks of angels to her lover, Stone floats angels up into the sky. If Lewis fantasizes about horses flying, we see flying horses. If Stone needs a symbol of coiled violence, we get coiled rattlesnakes. In fact, there's a rattlesnake motif running through the first half of the movie, cumulating in a visit to an old American Native who lives so sagely and with such self-control that he can--you guessed it!--tame rattlesnakes.

Stone's dramatic strategies often turn out to be incoherent. For instance, he stages a flashback to Lewis's family life, rife with child abuse and incest, as a TV situation comedy that includes canned audience laughter. Given Killers's satirical animus against the media, this choice may seem both clever and apropos. But, actually, it isn't. If this is a memory of Lewis's, why is it cast as situation comedy? Wouldn't she instead remember her victimization as a soap opera or as one of those prime-time social-problem-of-the week movies? Or if we aren't seeing the incest from Lewis's point-of-view but from a more or less objective standpoint, why make situation comedy part of the indictment of violence? Some sitcoms may be klutzy and unfunny, but most are decent enough in their intentions, depict family life with a mixture of skepticism and affection, and certainly don't promote violence or incest. Granted, Stone's stylization distances us enough from the domestic horror so that his satire isn't overwhelmed by our revulsion, but the satire itself misfires.

The pain and death that the protagonists visit on people are stylized, too. The victims are photographed in close-up at the moment of death and are made to look stupid, craven, repellent, and bereft of dignity. Late in the movie, mystical murderer Harrelson informs his interviewer that all people have committed at least one act for which they deserve to die. Stone's staging of the death agonies seems to support his killerhero's view.