Were we wrong about ‘Natural Born Killers’? The pros, cons of Oliver Stone’s most controversial movie

You might say that Natural Born Killers was naturally born to be controversial. Released in the late summer of 1994, Oliver Stone’s kaleidoscopic satire of mass media, true crime and the justice system set out to make audiences uncomfortable… and it succeeded. That was familiar territory for Stone, who had previously shocked moviegoers’ systems with films like JFK and Wall Street.

But the blowback to Natural Born Killers was even more intense because of the gleefully over the top violence committed by its “heroes” — road-tripping serial killers Mickey and Mallory, played by Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis. Released between 1993’s disastrous Waco, Tex. siege and the Columbine High School massacre in 1999, the film caught America at a time when national concerns were rising over the media’s supposed role in aiding and abetting violent behavior, as well as the kind content that young audiences were consuming — concerns that haven’t gone away nearly 30 years later.

In fact, following the film’s release, Stone was the subject of a lawsuit after two Oklahoma teenagers cited Natural Born Killers as the inspiration for their 1995 crime spree. (The case was ultimately thrown out in 2001.) And the Columbine killers, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold reportedly used the film’s initials “NBK” as a code name for their planned attack.

Leaving aside any real-world impacts, Natural Born Killers also proved divisive as a film, splitting critics right down the middle. Entertainment Weekly’s Owen Gleiberman was firmly in the “pro” camp, naming the movie as 1994’s second-best film behind Pulp Fiction. (Funnily enough, Natural Born Killers was conceived by Quentin Tarantino, but Stone heavily rewrote his original script.) “Oliver Stone has topped himself,” his effusive review read. “I think Natural Born Killers is brilliant — the most haunting experience I’ve had at the movies this year — yet it may turn out to be the love-it-or-hate-it film of the decade.”

The New York Times’s Janet Maslin was more in the “hate it” camp. “Scratch the frenzied, hyperkinetic surface of Natural Born Killers and you find remarkably banal notions about Mickey, Mallory and the demon media,” she wrote, adding, “Despite isolated moments of bleak, disturbing beauty, it is finally less an epiphany than an ordeal.”

With Natural Born Killers newly available in a three-disc Collector’s Edition from Shout! Studios, it’s a good time to look back at this artifact of the ’90s culture wars and weigh its pros against its cons. Buckle your seatbelt… it’s gonna be a wild, neon-soaked ride.

PRO: The style is still substantive

Lewis and Harrelson in a wild scene from Natural Born Killers. (Warner Bros./Courtesy Everett Collection) (©Warner Bros/Courtesy Everett Collection)

Once upon a time, before the streaming age, you could waste an entire morning, afternoon and evening flipping through upwards of 57 TV channels in search of something to watch. After awhile, experienced TV flippers could fall into a kind of fugue state, where televised images, sounds and scenes collided off each other in bizarre juxtapositions. That’s precisely the kind of in between-realm where Natural Born Killers dwells, with Stone merrily flipping between film stocks, story genres and colors to simulate the experience of being hit by a tidal wave of media.

“I’m a bit of a circus mirror,” Stone said in a 1994 TV interview, adding that he was trying to entertain himself by mixing genres like the road movies and prison movies. “And inside the genre, [I wanted] to play around with the format and technique. We tried different mixed media …. and here really playing around and having fun.”

Three decades later, the movie’s formal audacity is certainly fun, and in some ways predicts the short attention span formats that social media would later popularize. If Natural Born Killers were made today, it’s easy to imagine Mallory’s “Sweet Jane”-scored “I see angels” dance going viral on TikTok.

CON: Harrelson is still a little too close to Cheers

Harrelson takes aim as Mickey Knox in Natural Born Killers. (Warner Bros./Courtesy Everett Collection) (©Warner Bros/Courtesy Everett Collection)

Even though Cheers had aired its series finale a full year before Natural Born Killers hit theaters, Woody Harrelson was still better known as Woody Boyd, by a large segment of the American public. Playing Mickey Knox feels like a conscious attempt on the actor’s part to burn his previous screen image to the ground. And Harrelson certainly commits to the role of an unhinged psycho killer, ratcheting his mannerisms and line delivery up to 11.

But it’s all a little too much, especially compared to Lewis’s performance as Mallory, which is often equally crazy, but also makes room for moments of haunting emotional pain. As Harrelson put Cheers further and further in the rearview, he found a better way to calibrate his range with standout star turns in The People vs. Larry Flynt and True Detective. It says something that his best scene in Natural Born Killers is Stone’s dark-hearted parody of ’90s sitcoms.

For his part, Harrelson seems to have conflicted feelings about the movie now. “I didn’t know it would be that controversial. It was very controversial,” Harrelson told Yahoo Entertainment in 2017. “People are like, ‘Do you like doing controversial movies?’ I’m like, ‘Hell, no. I like doing movies people would go see, not movies people are boycotting.'”

PRO: It’s got one of Rodney Dangerfield’s best performances

Rodney Dangerfield delivers his most terrifying performance in Natural Born Killers. (Warner Bros./Courtesy Everett Collection) (©Warner Bros/Courtesy Everett Collection)

He may have complained about never getting any respect, but Rodney Dangerfield won some of the best reviews of his career for his brief appearance as Mallory’s disgusting dad. The late comic is part of the aforementioned sitcom parody section, where Stone turns Mallory’s home life into a demented version of era-specific series like Married… With Children and Family Ties.

“I never saw a script,” Dangerfield told the Los Angeles Times in 1994. “[Oliver] just said I was supposed to be ‘the father from hell.’ And the way I act in the movie is horrible.”

That’s an understatement. Not only does Mallory’s father berate his wife (played by ’80s sitcom staple, Edie McClurg) and crack wise about hitting his kids, but he makes it all too clear that he has incestuous designs on his daughter. No wonder that part of her attraction to Mickey is that he’s all too willing to make her father their first victim. Dangerfield doesn’t pull back from the character’s awfulness, and the shock value of seeing the Caddyshack scene-stealer work so blue works in his favor.

“It’s funny to have this vicious guy and put him in a sitcom,” Dangerfield mused three decades ago. “I don’t know whether to laugh at me or take me seriously. People are taking me seriously, aren’t they? The acting we’re doing is to try and make it seem believable.”

CON: And one of Tommy Lee Jones’s worst

Tommy Lee Jones as prison warden Dwight McClusky in Natural Born Killers. (Warner Bros./Courtesy Everett Collection) (©Warner Bros/Courtesy Everett Collection)

The year prior to Natural Born Killers, Tommy Lee Jones rocketed to the top of Hollywood’s A-list — and won an Oscar — courtesy of Andrew Davis’s action classic, The Fugitive. That movie memorably showcased Jones’s flair for wry humor, encapsulated by his still-classic, “I don’t care,” moment. But Natural Born Killers puts the actor in full “gonzo humor” mode, and that’s a speed that doesn’t necessarily play to his strengths. (See also: Batman Forever.)

On paper, at least, Jones was a good candidate to play Dwight McClusky, a pig-headed prison warden whose incompetence and inflated ego cause him to lose his own head during a third act prison riot. But Stone saddles the actor with a ridiculous Looney Tunes-like mustache and hairstyle that encourages a level of cartoonishness that’s better suited to a Dwight Yoakam or Nicolas Cage. It doesn’t help that the jailhouse portion wears out its welcome — something that Gene Siskel called out in his otherwise positive review.

“The weakness of the film is its third act,” the late critic said. “Once they go to prison …. that gets a little old. We get the idea too quickly. Within the movie it goes on too long.”

PRO and CON: It’s not promoting violence… but it does pull its punches

Lewis and Harrelson as Mallory and Mickey in Natural Born Killers. (Warner Bros./Courtesy Everett Collection) (Warner Bros./Everett Collection)

As with so many cultural artifacts that get caught up in larger culture wars, Natural Born Killers was an easy target upon its initial release. For politicians and critics that already saw danger is so much pop culture — like, say, Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole, who denounced the film — Stone’s hyper-realistic violence just provided further evidence of societal rot. And, on the other side, anyone celebrating Mickey and Mallory would have to be willfully blind to the way Stone depicts the destructiveness of their self-delusions of grandeur.

“Every murder in that movie is ridiculous, don’t you think?” Stone told journalist and critic Matt Zoller Seitz in the 2016 book The Oliver Stone Experience. “It was a satire, and was pointed directly at this concept of American violence, of this mentality that embraces violence for money and news …. and embraces sensationalism, and how sensationalism attracts violence.”

Removed from the ’90s, Stone’s satirical voice has largely drowned out the voices of the film’s critics. But the director is also arguably guilty of letting his main characters off the hook — and not as part of the joke. In the film’s original ending, Mickey and Mallory are killed by another prisoner that they escaped with. But the director gives them a perhaps unearned reprieve on flimsy circumstances. Informed by Seitz that there are no “good guys” in Natural Born Killers, Stone replies: “What about Mickey and Mallory? They’re lovers!”

“What’s worse?” Stone later says, making it clear that he doesn’t regard Mickey and Mallory as total jokes. “The two killers who love each other, who at least have some love in their life, some kind of affection? Or these [other] monsters we created?”

The Natural Born Killers Collector’s Edition Blu-ray is available now at most major retailers including Amazon.