Violence as a media event

Probably one of the most violent films ever made, "Natural Born Killers" is one of the most misunderstood. Oliver Stone was excoriated for making this movie and many people complained about the film "glorifying violence". What many viewers failed to understand is that "Natural Born Killers" isn't about glorifying violence at all; it's a chilling parody of the American fascination with violence. The movie is a satire from beginning to end, and the quick changes from color to black/white and back again, interspersed with animated sequences, serve to point this up. It's like watching a particularly violent edition of "Mad" magazine.

The plot focuses on Mickey and Mallory, two killing machines without heart or soul or conscience, whose only redeeming virtues are their love for each other. After Mickey rescues Mallory from her sexually abusive father, they go on a cross-country killing spree which shows blood liberally splattering the screen. Their signature calling card is to leave one witness alive to tell the police and the press that "Mickey and Mallory Knox did it."

Mickey and Mallory quickly become a media event. These guys are too cool for words. They're lionized from Topeka to Tokyo. Japanese girls are photographed giggling for the news cameras wearing long blond Mallory wigs. They take out police, innocent bystanders, and anybody who gets in their way. They're instant media stars. And feeding the frenzy is a TV reporter named Wayne Gale, the host of a show called "American Monsters", who turns Mickey and Mallory into superstars.

The killing spree can't last forever, of course; eventually, they are caught and thrown into a maximum security prison. But even there, the carnage continues: we're told that by the time they've been locked up for only a year, they've managed to kill five prisoners, three wardens and a psychiatrist Mallory murdered with her bare hands when he asked her about her parents. Wayne Gale, insatiable for ratings, scores the coup of a lifetime when he arranges for a live interview with Mickey inside the prison right after the Super Bowl when he has the TV audience hooked. The prison populace is allowed to watch the interview. Deliberately goading Mickey to explode, Gale asks him about his philosophy that makes him want to commit murder. "Sh*t, man," responds Mickey, "I'm a natural born killer."

With that, the prison erupts into one of the bloodiest riots ever filmed on screen. People are shot, slashed and set afire. Mickey manages to distract his guards long enough to grab a rifle and kill six of them, taking one of them hostage to rescue Mallory, Gale panting along after them to record all this for live TV. Gotta keep those ratings up. Mallory is rescued and the pair break jail, killing everything in their path, including Gale, whose usefulness has now expired. The last scene in the movie, Mickey and Mallory on the road with their two children and Mallory about to deliver a third any minute, underscores the whole message of the film: violence feeds on itself and begets yet more violence.

In the roles of Mickey and Mallory, Woody Harrelson and Juliet Lewis give convincing performances of two lowlifes so poisoned by their nightmare childhoods that they can only succeed in life by taking other lives. They're cold-blooded murder machines. They aren't meant to be sympathetic characters and they're not; but Oliver Stone's direction makes them pale in depravity alongside some of the other characters: Mallory's nauseating sexually abusive father, excellently played by Rodney Dangerfield, the sadistic warden (Tommy Lee Jones is chilling in this role), the despicable detective and his morbid fascination with Mallory, and above all, Robert Downey's superb characterization of the media pimp who feeds off blood and gore. Those viewers who were most upset by the film missed its message. "Natural Born Killers" is a brilliant, disturbing depiction of the shallowness of American culture (and its global effect) at the end of the 20th century.