Natural Born Killer - Essay Example

Natural Born Killers: A Review Oliver Stone, famous for controversial s and films such as Platoon, Wall Street and JFK directed Natural Born Killers, a story by Quentin Tarantino, who has Pulp Fiction and Inglorious Basterds in his name and screenplay by Richard Rutowski and David Velos who wrote Behind Enemy Lines. In an article in New York Post.com, Oliver Stone when asked by Kyle Smith about the film said: I think it’s a very fine piece of filmmaking and I think it transcends time. It’s very fine cutting, we worked on the cutting for almost a year and we shot it in a highly unorthodox style that you see more and more on TV. It had never quite been done before – a mixture of stocks and styles. I was influenced, I have to say, by MTV and some of the styles I saw in the early 80s and 90s on television. But no one had tried that style over the course of 90, 100 minutes. The story shown in 1994 is about two lovers, Mickey (played by Woody Harrelson) and Mallory (played by Juliette Lewis) who wreaked havoc along Route 666, by senselessly killing people in almost three weeks: waiters, police, gas station attendants, and anybody who had the misfortune to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. The pair always leaves one person alive to tell the tale of their act. The gory acts intrigued, captivated and covered by media through a reporter’s (played by Robert Downey Jr.), through his follow up and continuous reports about the pair’s exploits. The media reports made them famous criminal celebrities, almost in the league of Bonnie and Clyde. From the opening sequence of the film, Mickey and Mallory were introduced in the story, setting the platform successfully as the audience is easily captivated, curiosities aroused as to what the movie will offer them as a whole. The film was set in the 1990’s, a time when freedom was usually taken advantage of by people, with media encroaching into people’s private lives. It was a time when drugs were rampant, when anything and everything was hyped, either by people or the ratings-hungry media. A mixture of action, drama, comedy and fantasy, Natural Born Killers tackled conflict, murder, motivations and selfishness that were successfully raised and presented in the entire length of the movie through slow motion, flashbacks, chaotic presentation of scenes, interspersed with scenes that one will think as unnecessary at first but the importance of which is revealed near the end. Quentin Tarantino wrote the story in the way that the narratives are presented from different points of view - from the reporter, the warden and from Mickey himself, giving the audience balanced information with regards to cause and effects presented in the story. The closing sequence brought out the whole sense of the story at which point the audience fully understood the connections of the characters, the points raised and whatever questions the audience have relating to the whole story. Oliver Stone successfully set the moods by using different camera angles and shots that easily connected the audience to the movie. Getting reactions and emotions he hoped to get from the audience although I cannot understand the use of black and white for it just made the sense bleak and gloomy. The animations he used actually did not contribute to the film and the story in general. Although the costumes were okay, they were a little bit of the eighties than the nineties. The actors were great. They did great in portraying the characters that I actually felt compassion, anger, and pity for them. And finally, the sound effects really contributed to the total effects of the movie. The soundtracks used were able to draw emotions that the story would like to get from the audience. Violent, bloody, gory scenes and overall editing aside, Natural Born Killers presented murder at its worse, dissected the psychology of the act itself and the murderers and the media’s response to it. It has shown the positive and negative powers of the media on the people who watch them. It has shown how the media tires to bring the audience the truth but also its ratings-hungry ways on how to capitalize on an issue or news. It also shows how celebrity-obsessed society has become, never discriminating who to look up to, as long as they are famous and how society glorifies senseless violence, with the media taking advantage by sensationalizing them. It shows the role of the media on what society has become in the 90s. A society glued to television watching senseless violence reported by fame-hungry reporters, mesmerized, never sure whether they are watching because they feel for the victims or because of the thrill of watching somebody who has killed other people. The interview scene tackled the reasons for the murders and inculcated into the audience that murder, for whatever reason is still murder and is evil. Whether we accept it or not, the movie showed the evil that is within each and every one of us. Works Cited Natural Born Killers. Oliver Stone. Warner Brothers Pictures. 1994 Smith, Kyle. Oliver Stone Q&A: Natural Born Killers. New York Post. 13 October 2009. Web. 23 November 2012. Read More