In his long and storied career, Oliver Stone hasn’t really made very many good movies. In fact, he’s responsible for what is probably the worst historical action “epic” ever made, Alexander. In the 90’s, though, he had a decent run, with The Doors, the oft-mocked JFK, and Nixon, none of which were particularly great but didn’t quite reach the levels of bad he’d catapult himself through later in his career.
During that whole “not totally suck-ass” period he made Natural Born Killers, which is still a good movie – maybe Stone’s best - and although it’s hamfisted bullshit from beginning to end, it’s an exciting and entertaining movie with some great performances and a really riveting climax. If you ignore the fact that Oliver Stone is smashing you over the head with a wooden plank that’s been plastered with the very tired and dated message “SERIAL KILLERS AND THE MEDIA ARE ALL TO BLAME FOR SENSELESS VIOLENCE” writ large in mile-high spraypaint, it’s a pretty solid movie, even if it’s lost a lot of its edge over the years. When it came out, the chief complaint was that it looked too much like a music video, had too many rapid edits and had too nutty a visual style. Looking at it now, it’s tamer than any recent Michael Bay movie in that regard, and is almost quaint.
The picture quality is great, and maintains the film’s choppy style; this thing was shot on nearly every existing recording technology known to man at the time and they’ve preserved that here without making it look like shit. The disturbing sitcom-style “I Love Mallory” sequences with Rodney Dangerfield intimidating and molesting Juliette Lewis maintain their blurry cheap-TV look, as do the zillion other film techniques this movie employs. It looks best when they’re using an oversaturated ceiling light, but this isn’t a movie where you want to dick around with the visuals too much. It isn’t supposed to look crystal clear, but the transfer is very nice.
This is one of Warner’s “prestige” Bluray releases, meaning it comes in this children’s book-style hardcover packaging that has a glossy booklet attached. They did the same thing for Bonnie & Clyde and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and it works out OK. There aren’t any exclusive special features, just the usual bored-sounding Oliver Stone droning on about the film, describing it as it happens. There are some deleted scenes but there isn’t anything new here.
SO IS IT WORTH IT?
If you can find it cheap, yes. I picked it up on sale for $19 at Target, which apparently stocked 5 copies and couldn’t sell them all after a week so they marked it down and made more room for The Day After Tomorrow. Amazon has it now for $23. Pick it up in a BOGO sale or buy it used and you won’t be disappointed.
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