At birth, I was cast into a flaming pit of scum forgotten by God
In a word, Natural Born Killers is strident. It is also scattered, excessive, and occasionally repugnant, but not necessarily bad. It is the result of a collision between Quentin Tarantino and Oliver Stone. Tarantino, just embarking on his successful directing career, had written the script and this film was made concurrently with his own filming of Pulp Fiction. There are a lot of moments of high-stylization that have the earmarks of Tarantino’s own films, and while Tarantino was indeed often at the time concerned with media and the roots of violence, as well as its omnipresence in culture, from the rest of his work it seems likely that sledgehammer approach this film takes is largely Oliver Stone’s. This also drove the style Stone had been experimenting with (of a thematic use of multiple film stocks) into indecipherable overdrive.
While in JFK the use of different stocks had a distinct logic to it, with black and white denoting flashbacks and conjectural reimaginings and super-8 showing perspectives of the assassination (referent to Abraham Zapruder), Natural Born Killers is just hyperactive. An opening montage of television images and wildlife footage sets the stage for an all-out media barrage. We come upon our ‘protagonists’ (sorta) having lunch in a roadside diner. A flash of black and white showing an alternate line-reading by the waitress gives us a glimpse of the subjective viewpoint of one of our leads, as service-sector friendliness is reinterpreted as salacious flirting. Mallory (Juliette Lewis) walks over to the jukebox in aimless frustration and in another black and white flash passes a man in a both reading a newspaper with the headline ‘666 DEAD’ on it, but he disappears. This part will only make sense on a second viewing, and I’ll come back to him later on.
The film’s titles are cheap text, looking like a nineties television show opening, certainly intentional. Like Grindhouse, this is used as an evocation of a style, but while Grindhouse was in celebration, this film finds little to approve in entertainment. The reveal of the characters is nicely handled, and it immediately sets up the sort of dreamlike, devalued nature of the film’s logic. From behind a newspaper with the headline ‘Mickey and Mallory Kill Six Teens During Slumber Party’ Mickey (Woody Harrelson) says ‘Her name is Mallory.’ Mallory dances with a redneck for one song on the jukebox, then, when it switches to L7’s “Shitlist” the violence begins. The violence in this movie is extreme, garish, and cartoonish. When the second redneck steps up to face Mickey, he says ‘It’s not polite to point’ and slices the guy’s cock off, and we are treated to a flash shot of it landing on his shoe. A similarly brief flash of hi-def video shows Mickey covered in blood, as ‘the demon’ of his killer instinct awakes. Then we get operatic b&w slow motion shots of a couple murders, a bullet’s eye view going between the chef’s eyes and a butcher knife’s view as it spins through the air, through a window and into the head of the third redneck outside.
With most of the people in the diner dead, Mallory shouts, ‘When them people come here and ask you who done this, you say Mickey and Mallory Knox did it.’ This acknowledgment of their married status makes them both feel romantic, and they kiss and spin, the lighting dims and for a few moments, this becomes an old-school Hollywood romance. Very briefly, because it’s time for the mega-lurid opening sequence, full of cheap rear projection as they drive around on a rampage in their car, with frequent shots of fake looking rubber dragons and stock footage, all set to Patti Smith’s “Rock N Roll Nigger”. They come to rest in the desert, high and time-dilated, watching the stars and listening to The Cowboy Junkies’ “Sweet Jane” and we get to watch them both urinate and ponder the end of the world. This is a movie big on tastelessness. DO YOU GET IT DO YOU GET IT DO YOU GET IT. *sigh*
The flashback to their first meeting is done as a sitcom, shot in video, complete with laugh-track, excess lighting, and an obvious set living room. Rodney Dangerfield plays Mallory’s father, and he’s brilliantly horrible and disgusting, beating the mother and sexually abusing Mallory – he sends her up to shower up for him and says ‘When I get up there, she won’t see my face for an hour’ (and the audience laughs cheerfully – GET IT GET IT). Her little brother Kevin wears Kiss makeup and it’s revealed he was only born because the father was drunk and mistook the mother for Mallory. Charming home-life may have contributed to her life of crime? Mickey enters (to audience cheers) in a butcher’s smock, carrying fifty pounds of ground beef, and the looks shared by Mickey and Mallory are shot in flashes of black and white romance. They run off together and her father calls the cops. After a brief montage of channel-surfing ending on that old Coke commercial with the polar bears, we get to a COPS/Hard Copy style shot of Mickey stamped ‘APPREHENDED.’ Mickey is in jail (for statutory rape of Mallory?) and Mallory visits him. He vows to return to her when he gets out and save her from her father and she goes down on him.
Mickey escapes jail when a tornado hits his work detail out in the desert on a ranch or something, it doesn’t really matter. He steals a guard’s horse and manages to escape when a rattlesnake (in a red gel shot – the rattlesnake is A Significant Image) bites the leg of the horse chasing him. So anyway, true to his word, he returns to save Mallory from her father. The scene is in black and white but still scored and tracked like a sitcom. Mickey beats Mallory’s father with a tire iron and together they drown him in the aquarium, then they go up to her mother’s room and tie her down in the bed and set her on fire (for allowing the abuse). They let her brother go, and leave, to audience applause (GET IT).
On a suspension bridge, they hold a personal marriage ceremony by cutting their palms and letting their blood mingle. Drops of blood fall to the river below and there is an animation of this blood developing into evil insects that infect the water supply. The scene is intercut with super-8 shots to give a home-video feel. Now, it’s time to introduce another major element of this story – Wayne Gale, tabloid TV reporter, played by Robert Downey, Jr. Wayne is host of an America’s Most Wanted-type show called American Maniacs. From the ‘marriage’ scene we flip channels to his TV show, where he stands on Highway 666 (for real) giving a monologue very much like the opening of an episode of HBO’s The Hitchhiker, with Gale talking to the camera on the highway, wearing a dusty leather jacket. So we cut to the editing room, where they’re watching this playback and noting that they’ve used a lot of this before. ‘Repetition works, David,’ Wayne says, and there’s a hitch in the film as we cut to black and white. ‘Repetition works, David,’ Wayne says. Now we cut to a Mickey and Mallory Mania segment, showing the intense public popularity of the killers, that they’re widely celebrated as really cool murderers. Crowds mob their court appearances and people carry signs reading things like ‘murder me, Mickey.’
We catch up with Mickey and Mallory in a motel room. This section is especially surreal in design. Instead of the outside world, the windows show television or time-lapse footage, and occasionally memories of Mickey’s childhood, such as his mother scolding him. Mickey and Mallory are having a romantic evening in. Flipping the channels in disgust, Mickey asks, ‘Doesn’t anyone out there in Hollywood believe in kissing no more?’ Then he gets furious with Mal for taking off her ring in the shower. These are their matching snake rings, which symbolize his miraculous escape from prison to save her, and the snake is a big symbol in this movie (more on that in a bit). They start to have sex and Mickey is making strange faces to a corner of the room. The camera turns to reveal they have a hostage tied up in the room. Mal gets angry at Mickey for being more interested in the hostage than in her (and when she yells at him, we get a flashback of Mickey being yelled at by his mother which gives things kind of an odd oedipal slant) and she storms out.
Stopping at a gas station, Mal envisions the attendant as Mickey, and she kisses him. While kissing, she gets a flash of him as her father and she decides to dominate him. While he’s going down on her, he recognizes her as Mallory Knox and she shoots him. The next morning, detective Jack Scagnetti (played by Tom Sizemore with his usual maniac intensity, much more unhinged than Mickey or Mallory) is investigating the crime scene. He’s clearly infatuated with Mal, and has some celebrity as a serial killer capturer.
Meanwhile, Mickey and Mallory are out in the desert, taking shrooms. The car breaks down and they have an argument to Nine Inch Nails’ “Something I Can Never Have” and Mickey’s face gets all heat-distorted. Lost, they find a shack with a native snake-handler. Subtitles are provided for this sequence, projected on Mickey and Mallory. Artsy. We get a lot of flashes of ‘the demon’ which is Mickey covered in blood. Here, of course, we come back to the snake symbolism. The snake-handler tells the old joke about the woman saving a snake, and it biting her. ‘Bitch, you knew I was a snake.’ This reflects on the events just about to happen, but it also had a larger framework that was somewhat broken by the change of ending (much like the disappearing man in the diner at the start). Mickey has nightmares in the shack, sleeping off the drugs. These nightmares are half his childhood and half television (of course there is little difference between the two in his mind). The snake-handler is performing a rite to exorcise the demon from him while he sleeps, but Mickey wakes from the nightmare and shoots him. The old man had known such a thing would happen, and had prophesied Mickey as a demon twenty years prior. He was prepared and met his death with equanimity. Mal, upset by Mickey killing a good person who helped them, runs outside screaming, ‘There are no accidents, Mickey!’ and is bit by rattlesnakes.
Meanwhile, Tom Sizemore (I mean, Jack Scagnetti) strangles a hooker named Pinky. Oh god, Sizemore is in bikini briefs. That I don’t need to see. You get it, though? The cops are as crazy as the killers! Crazier even! GET IT?!
Mickey and Mallory arrive at the DRUG ZONE, a neon-green-lit giant pharmacy, looking for anti-venin for their rattlesnake bites. The pharmacist is in the back watching their episode of American Maniacs and he sets off the silent alarm. When Mickey’s about to kill him, he screams ‘I’m the only clerk left!’ Mickey replies, ‘You’re forgetting something. If I don’t kill you, there’s nothing to talk about.’ The police have arrived and there’s a shootout. Scagnetti has Mal, and a Japanese TV reporter is narrating the events in sexual metaphors. ‘Mickey’s quite virile,’ she says, ‘He has a very large gun.’ When he is taken down by tasers, she says, ‘He’s now rendered impotent.’
One year later, in jail, Scagnetti visits warden Dwight McClusky, played by Tommy Lee Jones. They hit it off right away, they’re both insane fascists who want to kill these criminals and have no sympathy for them (really, why should they, though? These are unrepentant mass murderers, so who do we sympathize with? Oh, right, no one, carry on). We get some back story on Scagnetti’s own insanity. His mother was killed by Charles Whitman at the U of T shootings, right in front of him, and from that day forward, he vowed to bring killers to justice. Except he’s a killer too! DID I JUST BLOW YOUR MIND?
This whole section of the movie was shot in a real, working maximum security prison, and in shooting the riot scenes to come, they caused an actual riot. The prison in the movie is described as being at 200% capacity and Stone certainly captured a volatile atmosphere. Scagnetti and McClusky are planning a prison transfer to an insane asylum, where in an attempted escape, Scagnetti could kill them both. This is to take place the day after Mickey is interviewed by Wayne Gale. Here we also get the genesis of Juliette Lewis’ ill-considered music career, as she sings “Born Bad” in her cell.
Now, the interview. This is the best part of the movie, really the only part that works just right, without getting too hyperactive. We get a great intro by Dr. Emil Reingold, played by Stephen Wright. This is their prison psychiatrist. ‘They’re not psychotic,’ he says, ‘they just don’t give a damn.’ When asked what he thinks of Mal threatening to murder him, he answers, ‘I never really believe what women say to me.’ The psychiatrist is himself insane! G-E-T I-T!? The interview is live on Super Bowl Sunday, right after the game. Mickey shaves his head in preparation, in an unusually quiet sequence for this movie.
‘I come from violence,’ Mickey says. ‘My dad had it, his dad had it.’ We get a flashback of Mickey’s father shooting himself when Gale mentions speculation on Mickey having perhaps killed his father at the age of 10. Gale tries frequently in this segment to get tough with Mickey, but Mickey remains perpetually calm. ‘I know a lot of people who deserve to die,’ he says, looking at one of the prison guards. ‘A lot of people out there walking around already dead, just waiting to be put out of their misery.’ He explains that as a killer, ‘death just kind of becomes what you are’ but that love can change things and that he and Mallory are through with killing. ‘Only love can kill the demon. Hold that thought,’ Wayne says and we cut to that Coke commercial again. During the commercial break, Scagnetti goes to see Mal. Back in the interview, Mickey derides the media and praises the purity of murder, and concludes, ‘Shit, man. I’m a natural born killer.’ This keys off the riot.
Mickey puts the guards at ease telling dirty jokes, then takes one down and grabs a shotgun and starts blasting, to the perfect music cue of “Bombtrack” by Rage Against the Machine. While he’s doing this, Mal beats the shit out of Scagnetti. When Mickey arrives, Mal stabs Scagnetti in the throat. In the ensuing riot and escape, Wayne Gale gets totally caught up in the mayhem and joins with Mickey and Mallory, shooting cops and having a great time. Finally, we are introduced to Owen, the guy we saw in the diner at the start. He leads them out of the jail. They end up going right out the front door by use of Wayne Gale and one of the guards as hostages, and McClusky is torn to pieces by the prisoners. Outside, Mickey and Mallory prepare to shoot Wayne Gale. ‘This is not about you, you egomaniac. I kinda like you,’ Mickey says, but ‘Killing you and what you represent is a statement. I’m not exactly 100% sure what it’s saying.’ I guess that really sums everything up, doesn’t it? They shoot him and Mickey admits, ‘I’m gonna miss him.’
We conclude with an ending montage of major nineties media circuses, like the Menendez Brothers, Rodney King, and Waco, while Leonard Cohen’s great “The Future” plays – ‘I’ve seen the future, brother. It is murder.’ Curiously, the final shot is an extreme close-up of a rabbit.
Now, the original ending had Owen on the road with Mickey and Mallory. In this version, he sort of just disappears between the escape and them killing Gale. However, in this alternate ending, he is offended that they don’t want to take him with them, and he shoots them (like the rattlesnake striking). This gives us a bit more reason why we would have foreshadowed him way back in the first scene, as a premonition of their end.
Anyway, the end. A troubled damn movie. It’s not bad exactly, but it’s so heavy-handed and all in service of conflicted points. It’s just a little bit much. I hated this movie the first time I saw it, but it is undeniably compelling and I kept coming back to it and I liked it a little bit more each time. Then it got to a tipping point, and I only sort of like it now. It’s certainly unique and fascinating, there’s no denying that, but it’s a little too hyperactive and muddled, and it doesn’t have the mastery of the technique that Oliver Stone has in JFK or Nixon or Any Given Sunday. Also, the better ending is cut, and a great sequence with Denis Leary is also cut, which, while it wouldn’t really have fit in, it’s not like much else fit in, so why not keep it? Anyway, slightly recommended, if you can deal with extreme violence and a lot of half-assed media criticism.
Favourite Character: Robert Downey Jr. as Wayne Gale. Totally plays up all the absurdity of the film and has a delightfully insane and energetic performance. The scenes with him are the best in the movie. Not a likable character, really, but then no one in this movie is.
Favourite Scene/Moment: Obviously the interview between Wayne and Mickey. Tense, interesting, and subdued, which marks it as far different from everything else in the film.
Favourite Line: McClusky, upon being notified that Mickey and Mallory have just killed Scagnetti and are in the process of escaping during the riot, while it’s being televised live by the cameraman they have hostage: ‘LIVE ON NATIONAL TV? JESUS HAROLD CHRIST ON A FUCKING RUBBER CRUTCH, IS THIS HAPPENING TO ME?’
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