Director Oliver Stone has an impressive filmography with films like Platoon, Wall Street, and Born on the Fourth of July. In 1994 he took on a different type of film with Natural Born Killers from a screenplay by Quentin Tarantino that as reportedly retooled by Stone and others and features a great cast including Woody Harrelson, Juliette Lewis, Robert Downey Jr., Tom Sizemore, Tommy Lee Jones and Rodney Dangerfield. Now Shout Factory is bringing the film to 4K through its Shout Select brand for the first time.  

 

Natural Born Killers follows Mickey Knox and Mallory Wilson who aren't your typical lovers. After killing her abusive father, they go on a road trip where, every time they stop somewhere, they kill pretty well everyone around them. They do however leave one person alive at every shootout to tell the story and they soon become a media sensation thanks to sensationalized reporting.

 

While I am aware this film is an acquired taste it is one of my all time favorite films. I have loved this film since I saw it in the theater for the first time in 1994 and have had it on regular watching rotation ever since. There are so many layers to this film that I think some just don’t understand and just see the insanity and chaos of it all. If you see it only on the surface I can see how the film doesn’t connect, but there is so much more here.

 

First thing that always stood out to me was Harrelson’s turd as Mickey here which was way out of character than anything he had done before at the time. The pairing alongside Lweis is perfection and they are great to watch together and one of the reasons this film works as well as it does. The rest of the cast are outstanding as well especially a pre-Iron Man Robert Downey Jr. who had come off his praise in his brilliant performance Chaplin. He steals every scene he is in as a Geraldo Rivera like TV host/reporter.

 

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