| | | An Oliver Stone Film.
Features: DVD, Pan and Scan (TV Format), Widescreen, English, French, Spanish, Subtitled
They didn't win a Nobel Prize, throw a record fastball or travel another acceptable path to fame. What fugitive lovers Mickey and Mallory did was kill people. Lots of people. The media took care of the rest.Three-time Academy Award winner Oliver Stone (JFK, Platoon) delivers a powerful movie experience unlike any other: Natural Born Killers, a visually dazzling, wickedly funny slam of violence and media obsession that's "the most radical film any major studio has released since A Clockwork Orange" (Stephen Schiff, The New Yorker). As Mickey and Mallory, Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis portray the kind of crazy-mixed-up kids a demon has nightmares about. And Robert Downey, Jr., Tommy Lee Jones, Tom Sizemore and Rodney Dangerfield make vivid impressions in this wild ride that packs a wallop.
"One of the most dazzling, audacious and timely films, a feverish nightmare of American culture at its worst..." Emanuel Levy, EmanuelLevy.Com
"...Stone does an amazing job...[in] one of the most visually dazzling films I've ever seen." Kevin N. Laforest, Montreal Film Journal
"Berserk from the outset...one of the most brilliant establishing sequences of all time..." Marjorie Baumgarten, Austin Chronicle
"Sick, twisted, and brilliant." Michael Dequina, Mr. Brown's Movies
"...one of my all time favorite movies, and it put Oliver Stone on my list of 'Best Directors Ever'..." Peter Travers, Rolling Stone
"...an important film...[that's] more than an attention-grabber. It's a grenade pitched into the media tent." Jay Carr, Boston Globe
"Stone takes his characters right over the top, rubbing our noses in our own lust for excess...[this] an art of depraved catharsis." Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly
Editor's Note
Oliver Stone's over-the-top satire on America's worshipful fascination with tabloid criminals stars Woody Harrelson as Mickey Knox and Juliette Lewis as girlfriend-wife Mallory Wilson. Commencing with the dual murder of Mallory's sexually abusive father (Rodney Dangerfield) and grossly negligent mother (Edie McClurg), the anomic couple take off on a three-week killing spree across the country, telling everyone who they are so that they get the credit for their crimes. The media are immediately enthralled with the couple, especially Wayne Gale (Robert Downey Jr.), the bloodthirsty host of a tabloid TV show who follows their every move. By the time they're finally arrested, they've become such huge media stars that the cops treat them more like celebrities than criminals. Even the maniacal limelight-hogging warden of the Batongaville State Prison, Dwight McClusky (Tommy Lee Jones), is in awe. Stone pulls out all the stops in the prison riot, as the unwitting Gale becomes an unwilling participant in his own broadcast of the event. Again the director switches from film to video, from color to black and white, from sitcom parody to newsreel parody, and from one film stock to another, hoping to jar the audience out of its complacency with visual hyperbole.
Plot Summary
Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis star as Mickey Knox and Mallory Wilson, two young, attractive mass murderers in love in Oliver Stone's wild-eyed satire on the American fascination with criminals. After killing Mallory's loathsome parents, the pair perform a ritual "marriage" and take off on a "honeymoon" killing spree that wipes out 52 people. Bloodthirsty tabloid reporter Wayne Gale (Robert Downey Jr.) reports their every move to an adoring public while warden Dwight McClusky (Tommy Lee Jones) is only too eager to welcome such celebrities to his prison.
| Features | Audio: English Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound | | Audio: French Dolby Digital Stereo | | Behind-The-Scenes Documentary: Chaos Rising - The Storm Around Natural Born Killers | | Deleted Scenes & Alternate Ending | | Dubbed: French | | Feature-Length Audio Commentary By Writer/Director Oliver Stone | | Interactive Menus | | Original Theatrical Trailer | | Scene Selection | | Subtitles: English, French, Spanish, Portuguese |
| Technical Info
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Release Information
| | Studio: Warner |
| Release Date: 5/15/2007 |
| Original Release Date: 1994 | | Catalog ID: 116318 | | UPC: 00085391163183 | | Number of Discs: 1 |
Audio & Video
| | Video: B&W and Color |
Aspect Ratio | | Anamorphic Widescreen 1.85:1 |
| Cast & Crew
| Awards |
Nominee (1995) | | | Golden Globe, Oliver Stone, Best Director - Motion Picture | | | MTV Award, Juliette Lewis, Woody Harrelson, Best Kiss | | | MTV Award, Juliette Lewis, Woody Harrelson, Best On-Screen Duo | |
Winner (1994) | | | Venice Film Festival, Juliette Lewis, Pasinetti Award - Best Actress | | | Venice Film Festival, Oliver Stone, Special Jury Prize |
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| | Professional Reviews | Rolling Stone
"...The movie is a technical marvel, stunningly photographed..." 09/08/1994 p.83-7Entertainment Weekly
Ranked #1 in Entertainment Weekly's "10 Favorite Films of the '90s" -- "...Fevered genius....[A] hypnotic, revolutionary head trip..." 04/01/2000 p.159 New York Times
"...Stone's vision is impassioned, alarming, visually inventive, characteristically overpowering..." 08/26/1994 p.C1 Film Comment
"...[A] brilliantly outrageous film..." 11/01/1994 p.80-1 Sight and Sound
"...[Harrelson and Lewis are] superb at exaggerating the archetypes of cool psychopathology..." 03/01/1995 p.44-5 Chicago Sun-Times
"...NATURAL BORN KILLERS is like a slap in the face, waking us up to what's happening..." 08/26/1994 p.51 DVD Verdict 9 of 10
Natural Born Killers is a tour-de-force; a provocative indictment against the media and our desensitized-to-violence culture. One of cinema's most controversial films, feelings run strongly both for and against it, an indication that the film met it's goal; which is to hold a mirror up to our society and see if we can bear to look at it. It's not for the faint of heart or those unwilling to engage their neurons, but if you're willing to really try to see what the film is saying you may well agree with me that this is one of the most important films of the 1990s...Natural Born Killers is, above all else, a commentary on how, as a society we condemn violence, while hypocritically glorifying it in the media. It delves deeply into the human psyche, and that is not always a comfortable experience. I think it's well worth the effort in the end, and adults should see it at least once. - Norman Short
Chicago Sun-Times 10 of 10
Oliver Stone's "Natural Born Killers" might have played even more like a demented nightmare if it hadn't been for the O.J. Simpson case. Maybe Stone meant his movie as a warning about where we were headed, but because of Simpson it plays as an indictment of the way we are now. We are becoming a society more interested in crime and scandal than in anything else - more than in politics and the arts, certainly, and maybe even more than sports, unless crime is our new national sport...Stone has never been a director known for understatement or subtlety. He'll do anything to get his effect, and that's one of the things I value about him. He understands that celebrity killers have achieved such a bizarre status in America that it's almost impossible to satirize the situation - to get beyond real life...Seeing this movie once is not enough. The first time is for the visceral experience, the second time is for the meaning. - Roger Ebert
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