7.2 | / 10 |
Users | 4.2 | |
Reviewer | 3.5 | |
Overall | 4.2 |
Mickey Knox and Mallory Wilson are two young, attractive mass murderers in love. After killing Mallory's loathsome parents, the pair perform a ritual "marriage" and take off on a "honeymoon" killing spree that wipes out 52 people. Bloodthirsty tabloid reporter Wayne Gale reports their every move to an adoring public while supercop Jack Scagnetti becomes famous for chasing and capturing them.
Starring: Woody Harrelson, Juliette Lewis, Robert Downey Jr., Tommy Lee Jones, Tom SizemoreCrime | 100% |
Dark humor | 79% |
Drama | 62% |
Surreal | 35% |
Action | Insignificant |
Romance | Insignificant |
Video codec: VC-1
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: Dolby TrueHD 5.1 (48kHz, 16-bit)
Spanish: Dolby Digital 2.0
There is no DD 5.1 track:
English SDH, French, German, Portuguese, Spanish, Arabic, Bulgarian, Dutch, Finnish, Greek, Hebrew, Icelandic, Indonesian, Korean, Norwegian, Swedish, Thai, Turkish
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region free
Movie | 3.5 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.5 | |
Extras | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
Anyone with cable or satellite television can attest to the fact that everything from the mundane to the more patently unusual (think of last month’s “Balloon Boy” incident) is announced with breathless alacrity. Such sensationalistic “news” shows as Nancy Grace routinely have an “Urgent Breaking News” banner at the bottom, something I guess which could be seen as the broadcast equivalent of the boy who cried wolf. What is Ms. Grace going to scroll across the bottom of her screen when something really bad happens? You know, like a mass murderering couple on a rampage, a la Oliver Stone’s notorious 1994 film Natural Born Killers. Those of us who regularly experience (endure?) coverage of horrific crimes on satellite or cable can no doubt relate to Stone’s perhaps obvious thesis that the media feed on such events. One only needed to have the television on recently, for example, to see virtually every “news” outlet marking (I hesitate to say celebrating, though that in fact is what it seemed at times) the 40th anniversary of the horrific Manson family murders. And yet because of Stone’s nonstop hyperbole in the film, which he couches (rightly or wrongly) as satire, it’s often hard to separate the horrors being parodied from the film’s own technique. Can a film which is ostensibly parodying the glorification of violence be taken seriously (at least with regard to its thesis) when it spends two hours doing a pretty damned good job of glorifying violence itself? That’s the question at the core of whether or not you will see Natural Born Killers as a masterpiece, a travesty, or something in between.
Mickey and Mallory, serial killers and media darlings.
Natural Born Killers arrives on Blu-ray with a 1080p/VC-1 encode that is startlingly variegated in its image quality due to the wide variety of formats Stone utilized to film the piece. Natural Born Killers plays like a patchwork quilt of styles, including everything from grainy desaturated video, to highly defined film. Therefore in analyzing this Blu-ray, the viewer needs to separate the widely divergent image qualities inherent in the source material from the Blu-ray itself. The bottom line is, this BD reproduces Stone's original vision, for better or worse, with pretty inerrant accuracy. The filmed elements sport a rather garish palette, one that tends toward ruddy red fleshtones, but detail is excellent throughout. The many smaller millimeter formats, while noticeably (and understandably) softer, also sport relatively sharp definition. The overly grainy black and white post-processed shots verge toward a digital noise look at times, but my sense is this was the original look of the film (which I haven't seen since its original, edited version in 1994). There were no egregious examples of artifacting that I noticed anywhere throughout the film.
Natural Born Killers has one of the most bombastic Dolby TrueHD 5.1 mixes in recent memory. This is a film which delights in an aural onslaught that is not only immersive but at times almost oppressively loud. Everything from gunshots to the virtually nonstop underscore envelops the listener, with rear channels being consistently utilized throughout the film. Directionality is at times almost cartoonish throughout the film, with bullets whizzing from left to right. This cacaphony can get pretty overwhelming, especially in the film's final riot scenes, when there is such a glut of aural information assaulting the listener from every angle that it's hard to separate discrete elements (something that I'm sure was desired by Stone in his sound design for the film). Dialogue is always crisp and clear, and this soundmix does sport one of the most impressively dynamic ranges in recent memory, with everything from the startling LFE of explosions to the ultra high frequency of a victim's scream being reproduced with absolutely accuracy. I did do some spot checking with the other major English offering, a traditional Dolby 5.1 mix, and while it's certainly fine, you'll notice immediately the lack of range on this mix, with neither the lowest lows or the highest high as sonically present as they are in the TrueHD mix. This is especially evident in the riot scene which caps the film.
Natural Born Killers: The Director's Cut first and foremost restores over 150 (admittedly small) cuts that Stone had to make to appease the ratings board when the film was first released in 1994. In terms of actual extras on the BD, there are two good featurettes, the first of which is new and in HD, Natural Born Killers Evolution (21:59), which goes into some depth about the filming (including some rather nonchalant commentary about the rampant drug use--including hallucinogens--on set). This piece, which interviews several website gurus like Wikipedia's "Jimbo" Wales also makes it abundantly clear how much worse things are a mere 15 years later in terms of media (including internet) coverage of these sorts of events. Ported over from the laserdisc release is the SD Chaos Rising (26:30), which is the featurette where Stone and Harrelson, both obviously pre-Columbine, say the film could never inspire violence. A Charlie Rose interview with Stone is the final video extra. Also on tap are several deleted scenes, all in SD, including a kind of funny stream of consciousness rant by Denis Leary as well as an alternate ending featuring "The Angel of Mercy" (look for him in several scenes throughout the film--he's the guy reading the newspaper in the opening cafe scene, and later is the guide out of the jail). There's also a thick insert booklet with lots of pictures and commentary by Stone and others.
When a film seems to glory in the very subject it's simultaneously attempting to excoriate, it's bound to be controversial. Natural Born Killers' reputation may have been forever changed by the tragedy at Columbine, but even before that horror, a lot of viewers and critics were troubled by the film's penchant for highlighting the very violence it took the media to task for sensationalizing. All of that said, the film is a wonder of styles and contains both Stone's typical trenchant attitude about modern life, as well as some visceral performances by its lead quintet. It's a film that sparks discussion, a film that is patently provocative and over the top. It probably should not be viewed by anyone impressionable and emotionally troubled. Whether or not you fall into that particular category, you'll also need to decide if you need to be exposed to something this graphic in order to decry violence and the media's promotion of it.
1994
1994
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1994
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1994
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1994
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1993
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