Finding out that Tarantino wrote the story for Natural Born Killers is about the second least surprising thing ever. The least surprising thing ever though was finding out that Rage Against the Machine’s Killing in the Name partook in the soundtrack. Easy Pickins.
Oliver Stone’s ambitious style of malicious filmmaking results in what many would consider to be the equivalent to drugging out on heroin while driving across country with two violent killers. Whether it be in the genre switching, ferocious green-screen effects, skippy filtering, hoppy editing, chic animated segments, or the pitch dark satire, this is a steamboat of anarchic execution used to match the movie’s tone with spot-on accuracy. To add insult to injury, every performance, from RDJ’s Australian reporter to Tommy Lee Jones’s archaic prison warden, produces quite the looney-bin of characters.
The infamous picture’s commentary on how pop culture can glorify real-life violence isn’t entirely explored substantially or even that intelligently as a matter of fact, and can easily be reinterpreted as paradoxically a glorification of violence itself, considering the movie seems aimlessly obscene to imprudent degrees at times. However, most mature individuals should be able to distinguish the messages and comparisons surrounding American culture that Stone has implemented in this aggressive project which freakishly feels more relevant today than it did in 1994.
At the end of the day, Natural Born Killers may just be the born in hell lovechild of True Romance and A Clockwork Orange. Who knows what truly created this beast, nevertheless.
Verdict: B
“Natural Born Killers” is now available to stream on YouTube, Google Play, iTunes, Vudu, Amazon Prime, and Hulu.
Burning the Celluloid 
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