Love it or hate it, Oliver Stone’s 'Natural Born Killers' is a movie that is impossible to ignore. Whether or not you "get" Stone’s acerbic criticism of the media and its treatment of criminals, or whether or not you appreciate Stone’s battering-ram style of overkill filmmaking, or whether or not you recognize that this movie is SUPPOSED to be loud, nerve-jangling and senses-numbing is not the point. The point is that Stone attacks the idiocies and hypocrisies of the media, our criminal justice system and today’s rapid-fire, brain-dead TV culture with tongue-in-cheek wit, bitter sarcasm and passion. Such qualities are rarely evident in today’s cinema.
Mickey and Mallory Knox (Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis) are the poor unfortunate results of parental mental and sexual abuse. They are the confused members of a generation that’s desensitized to bloodshed and views the world in tiny video bites. They’re at once the product of an information-starved 500-channel violence-fueled, everything’s-going-to-hell society AND the cause of it. Stone’s frenzied opus is told in two parts. Part one shows the two love birds on their cross-country killing spree and their rising popularity; the latter portion dwells with their incarceration, enlightenment and eventual breakout from prison.
Stone, ever the daring visual pioneer, employs a wide range of filmmaking and lighting styles here to illustrate characters’ moods and points-of-view and to suggest hidden psychological demons and behavioral motivations. Using different film stocks (from 35mm to Super 8 to videotape, color and black & white), flirting with time lapse photography and showing off dizzying camera tricks, and then injecting off-the wall heavy-metal animation, campy rear-projection images and eerie digital effects, Stone creates a surrealistic landscape. The effect is like rapid channel-surfing and the point is to reinforce how our society revolves around the media and how the media both inspires and is fueled by violence.
In a fascinating audio narration, Stone comments on the reactionaries’ knee-jerk outcries that his movie glorifies violence and that the graphic brutality depicted is too much. But that’s the point. Stone purposely goes way over the top in an attempt to illustrate the absurdity of extreme violence—the more ridiculous the violence, the more humorous it would seem to an intelligent audience able to distinguish between realistic violence (like in Stone’s own 'Platoon' or 'Born on the Fourth of July') and hyper-realistic violence intended to elicit glee.
Like in Paul Verhoeven’s 'RoboCop', the MPAA ratings board took a butcher knife to 'Natural Born Killers' and the effect of the trimming was one which Stone concedes heightened the effect of the graphic violence: by trimming the more grotesque, extreme bits, the ironic effect was necessarily diminished and, since the violence that survived the censors’ knives was less cartoonish and less extreme, it felt uncomfortably closer to reality. The result was that the edited version was far more disturbing.
This Pioneer Special Editions laserdisc restores some 150 edits made by the MPAA (Stone unapologetically calls the censorship board a proto-fascist organization and states flat-out that they "cut the balls out of the film"). The restored footage extends the film’s running time by nearly three minutes. Not all of the edits are of blood and gore however; some cuts were made because the overall level of chaos was just too much—i.e. too disturbing -- for the board to stomach.
Besides the addition of these restored bits of violence and pandemonium to the directors cut, this new version of the film differs from the theatrical version in one other way: the loud, grating Nine Inch Nails song "Burn" that previously screeched over the final images of the film before the end credits has inexplicably been replaced by a more subtle tribal piece—strangely, Stone offers no explanation as to why this music was substituted, even though his commentary points out nearly every other alteration made to the film.
The movie is presented in CAV format, allowing for careful, frame-by-frame study of the over 3,500 images that flash by at near-subliminal speed. The film is spread across five sides on three platters. The break between sides 1 and 2 is extremely awkward because it interrupts a conversation, breaking the scene right after a character asks a question (side 2 begins with the answer). The platter break between sides 4 and 5 is also jarring, because it breaks up the flow of the final confrontation between Mickey & Mallory and journalist Wayne Gale (Robert Downey, Jr.); the fifth side features only the last 10 minutes of the movie, followed by the start of the supplementary section.
The extras are quite juicy. Stone introduces seven additional deleted scenes, along with understandable explanations as to why he decided to cut them out. This section of deleted scenes with the Stone interview runs nearly 30 minutes. There’s also a music video for the aforementioned Nine Inch Nails song "Burn," and the original theatrical trailer. Finally, there’s a documentary that dwells on the furor surrounding the film, jammed with new interviews from Stone, Harrelson, Lewis, Tom Sizemore, Robert Downey, Jr., Tommy Lee Jones and principal filmmakers. Fans and admirers of "NBK" will relish this opportunity to see more of Stone’s twisted vision, uncensored and at its full furious impact.
The overall quality of this laserdisc is superlative. The image is the best I’ve ever encountered on a non-THX disc (and even bests some THX titles), especially considering the frequent use of problematic red and green lighting and grainy low-end film stocks within the movie. The sound is positively stunning (to be fair, the picture and sound on the previous Warner Home Video version of the theatrical cut was terrific, too).
The 1.85:1 letterboxing ratio is identical to the Warner version. The actual filmed ratio of 'Natural Born Killers' was probably around 1.66:1, so the 1.85:1 masking necessarily blocks out vertical information at the top and bottom of the frame.
A few technical notes: Oliver Stone’s narration throughout the film is scene-specific. However, during the final moments when Mickey & Mallory crucify Gale, Stone’s narration audibly changes, and the remainder is no longer specific. Audio bites are then compiled for the remaining portion of the film, and more interview segments can be heard for an additional 43 minutes on side 6. The extra scenes on sides 5 and 6 are also encoded for Dolby Digital AC-3. Lastly, the package design is very impressive, with a color program pamphlet and the three discs sheathed individually in catchy sleeves (labeled, sequentially, "Natural" "Born" and "Killers"), all housed in a sturdy box with a terrific new key-art concept. A still-frame section of photos, posters, text of the original Quentin Tarantino script versus Stone’s final reworking of it, and a sampling of the wide range of critical responses would have made this package a bit more complete. But the fact that 'Natural Born Killers' has finally been restored and presented to viewers as Stone always intended is reason enough to laud this disc. That Warner Bros., the film’s original studio, voluntarily relinquished the rights back to Oliver Stone so he could distribute this uncut and unrated version is unprecedented (Stone diplomatically gives thanks to the powers that be at Warners for allowing him to take back his movie and seek a secondary video company to distribute this director’s cut). As Warners no longer boasts rights to this unrated version, their familiar studio logo has appropriately been deleted from both the film and the trailer.
Vital Statistics: Pioneer Special Editions; 3 discs, 6 sides; movie in CAV, one side of extras in CLV; Widescreen (1.85:1); Stereo Surround; Dolby Digital AC-3; Chapter stops; Closed captioned; $109.98
S. Damien Segal.
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