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Directed by: Oliver Stone
Written by: Quentin Tarantino (story), David Veloz, Richard Rutowski & Oliver Stone (screenplay)
Mickey and Mallory, traumatized by their abusive childhoods, fall in love. They kill Mallory's parents together, and start driving around, killing almost everyone they meet, leaving always one person alive to tell their story. Their love story is irresponsibly glorified by the media.
I rented the director's cut and I'm trying to figure out what's the difference between the cuts, apart from being four minutes longer. Anyway, since I have only seen this cut, so I'll just have to go with this one. I was mostly interested in this film because of the original script written by Tarantino. Apparently the original however was heavily edited by Veloz, Rutowski and Stone, so I don't know what parts of Tarantino are actually left. I'd really like to read the original script, but I don't know if that's even possible.
My dad actually gave me a warning of this film. He said it was extremely heavy and distressing. It definitely is, and during some parts of the film it's done marvellously. The beginning of the film is a good example. The dialogue in that is pretty regular, it could be the beginning of any movie. The dialogue is something we could hear everyday, that's not what makes it distressing. That's done with the music. I've never liked Leonard Cohen's music, but it definitely spices up movies by making scenes extra creepy. I've had the soundtrack of this movie for a while, and most of the songs sounded extremely good, but when I saw the actual film I was slightly disappointed. Apart from few, like Leonard Cohen in the beginning, many of the tracks are easy to ignore, as they give nothing to the actual story. They just are playing in the background. If Tarantino had got to direct the movie his way, the soundtrack would've been so much better.
Also the cinematography makes the film unnerving. Fast shots, camera is tilted, some shots are in black and white... Let alone all the small symbolic things in between what's actually happening. The writing could be almost anything, cinematography like that does everything else. I've seen the same kind of visual side in Slipstream (2007). That movie was complicated anyway, so the symbolic fast shots of something random suited the film. The plot of Natural Born Killers isn't complicated. All that symbolism gets lost when the film isn't watched by someone who actually knows about symbols. Everyday watchers won't have time to analyse what a snake here and there means. If Oliver Stone didn't mean this movie to be watched by someone who doesn't want to analyse every little detail as an important symbol, he's pretentious.
The way this film was shot is good: tilted shots, fast shots, black and white shots, the colours... Those work. But like getting random shots of something isn't always that necessary. It's kind of like Stone wanted this film to be way more artistic than this plot could be. The story is artistic in the way how it can be analysed, but that's it. There's no need to make it an art film.
I wanted to like this movie, but it's hard. While it had everything I usually like in films, it felt too pretentious and overtly complicated. I was expecting something so much simpler and therefore so much better. And that's the reason why I'd want to see what Tarantino originally had. He's an excellent writer, and I feel like his original story was made into something needlessly weird.
When you think about it, Natural Born Killers is a good movie, if you judge it like critics do and all that. In technical sense it's excellent and all that, but it's annoying to watch. Natural Born Killers isn't something you can just throw into the DVD-player and watch it when you have nothing better to do, you have to really, really watch it, and that might ruin a film a little. If it's on TV, you can't just start in the middle if you missed the beginning and so on. While I appreciate what this film is, I can't say I actually like it.
☆☆☆☆
4 / 10
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