director
Oliver Stone
screenwriters
David Veloz
Richard Rutowski
Oliver Stone
story by
Quentin Tarantino
producers
Jane Hamsher
Don Murphy
Clayton Townsend
cinematographer
Robert Richardson
music
Trent Reznor
tomandandy
editors
Brian Berdan
Hank Corwin
cast
Woody Harrelson (Mickey Knox)
Juliette Lewis (Mallory Knox)
Robert Downey Jr. (Wayne Gale)
Tommy Lee Jones (Dwight McClusky)
Tom Sizemore (Jack Scagnetti)
Rodney Dangerfield (Ed Wilson)
Edie McClurg (Mrs. Wilson)
Sean Stone (Kevin Wilson)
Balthazar Getty (Jimmy Lupont)
Russell Means (Old Indian)
Pruitt Taylor Vince (Kavanaugh)
Everett Quinton (Wurlitzer)
Steven Wright (Dr. Emil Reingold)
Joe Grifasi (Duncan Homolka)
James Gammon (Redneck)
Arliss Howard (Owen Traft)
Jared Harris (London Boy)
O-Lan Jones (Mabel)
mpaa rating: R
running
time: 122m
u.s.
release: 8/26/94
video
availability: VHS -
DVD
other oliver
stone films
reviewed on this website:
- alexander
- any given sunday
- nixon
- u-turn
- world trade center
see also:
- review of the theatrical
version
- review of jane hamsher's
book killer instinct, about
the making of NBK
|
Review
of the Trimark Director's Cut videocassette release, Summer 1996
When Natural Born Killers first
raised its gory head in August 1994, I went to see it twice;
I rented it twice more after it arrived on video (on Valentine's
Day '95, ha-ha); and now I've seen Oliver Stone's preferred cut.
And I'm still of two minds about the damn thing. Part
of me loves the visuals, the audacity, the gonzo flavor; part
of me recoils at the crude attempts at satire. You'd think that,
after five viewings, one side would finally win.
Which makes NBK the ultimate Oliver Stone film. This artist
of assault (Platoon, JFK) loves dividing and conquering,
and his admirers and detractors are linked by their passion about
his work: You love it or you loathe it. There is much to love,
and to loathe, in NBK. And his original cut, in a gorgeous
letterboxed transfer packaged with a supplemental tape of excised
scenes and interviews, commands one's attention all over again.
NBK isn't new any more, but we come to it now with new
eyes. We know about the alleged copycat murders (and John Grisham's
absurd lawsuit against Stone), which seem uncomfortably to support
the film's satirical points; more importantly, as Stone acknowledges
in his interview, we know that NBK was very much a movie
of its day. Things have changed since 1994. The national obsession
with squalor and bloodshed, as typified by tabloid TV and daytime
talk shows, is on the wane. It's as if America's fever broke
when the O.J. trial finally ended.
NBK, then, is a specific (and ugly) Polaroid of a specific
(and ugly) era of the '90s. Will it endure? As a vivid cinematic
collage, sure. On the interview tape, Tommy Lee Jones goes so
far as to compare the film with Picasso's Guernica. He
has a point: Stone's images, equally chaotic and upsetting (and
often beautiful), pull a visceral response from you the way Picasso's
great anti-war painting does.
As satire, though, I still think NBK shoots itself in
the foot. Stone gets caught in the same trap awaiting any other
violent anti-violence movie: he becomes part of the disease he's
diagnosing. (Though, having read Quentin Tarantino's original
script, I must point out that much of the ham-handed satire is
his, not Stone's.) Is NBK responsible for any murders
it might have inspired? No. But violent images serving an anti-violence
theme have the same cumulative, desensitizing effect on us as
do violent images meant only to titillate. To acknowledge this
does not make one a hypocritical and prudish Medvedite, just
an unpopular voice of reason.
So what do consumers get this time around? On the supplemental
tape, Stone introduces a few scenes cut from the movie (a courtroom
scene with a wildly overacting Ashley Judd; a typically caffeinated
Denis Leary rant), which, as he admits, are interesting but expendable.
Some of the interviews are intriguing. Tom Sizemore, laughing
about Stone's intimidating tactics ("No, man, I won't fuck
up your table"), comes off best; a shockingly gaunt Robert
Downey Jr. makes you wish he would stop ditching rehab. The revelation
here is Stone's original, darker ending, which I feel he should
have kept.
Stone has also restored some 150 shots trimmed from the theatrical
cut to avoid an NC-17 rating; the changes amount to a splash
of blood here, a severed head or punctured hand there. The result
is a gorier but more cartoonish vision. The MPAA-approved, R-rated
cut actually comes across as harsher and more realistically
brutal in comparison. Go figure the MPAA out.
[Note:
This director's cut, with deleted scenes and interview segment,
is also now available on DVD, which boasts an audio commentary
by Stone as well.] |