Natural Born Killers

Malachi Jay Bruno

Introduction to Film


Natural Born Killers

Natural Born Killers is a 1994 Crime and Drama film by Oliver Stone and written by Quentin Tarantino. The two very popular names already gave me some kind of idea of what direction this movie was going in, but what I saw was not necessarily what I expected.
The movie starts off by introducing the two main ‘protagonists’, Mickey Knox and his wife, Mallory. Immediately, the crime scene that they create by killing nearly everyone in what seemed to be a calm diner, as soon as Mallory started being harassed by two characters that came in and saw her dancing. Then, the movie delved off into explaining Mallory’s passed, and what turmoil caused her to behave in such a way present-day. Murdering was not a foreign concept to her, as it was essentially the life-blood that gave her a key out of her father’s disgusting abuse. Mickey was also there during that scene, helped killed Mallory’s father, and then the two ran off to have an unofficial marriage, and continue their life in crime together.


Although the later parts of the movie have a lot more description of the evolution of their characters and the struggle they both go through with their chosen life, I thought it would be more interesting to talk about the way this film was introduced to the viewer. By starting off with such high energy and anxiety-inducing scene, it almost desensitized me while watching the rest of the movie. And although sometimes Mickey and Mallory truly committed some horrifying acts, my mind kept flashing back to that one scene between Mallory and her father that was presented as a snippet from a sitcom. That scene, and watching her be so utterly disgusted and scared of her father, almost justified the malicious pain she was inflicting on other people.

Watching Natural Born Killers elicited an array of emotions from me, there were times where I was gripping my seat to find out what would happen next, and others, where I was infuriatingly confused at what was being presented before me. I asked myself many times during this film, how a lot of this content was allowed to be put on television and why there wasn’t more criticism against it. Then again, maybe 30 years ago, these topics weren’t as difficult to joke about. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Blackkklansman: Ironically a Comedy

  Chloe Kowalyk Professor Wisniewski Intro to Film 18/11/2020 Blackkklansman, directed by Spike Lee, is a fantastic film. I especially liked how Lee integrated aspects of real protests and fights for civil rights into the film. The clip of the protestors who were run over by a car at the end brought tears to my eyes. I also felt that the clip, in the beginning, was extremely effective. It depicted a crane shot from Gone With the Wind where Scarlett O’Hara is walking through a scene of dead Confederate soldiers. I had to watch this movie for one of my AP English classes in high school, so I jumped up when immediately recognized where it was from. Along with Gone With the Wind, Lee also includes scenes from Birth, which heavily romanticized the Ku Klux Klan. Both films embedded in Blackkklansman are racist and exemplify what Ron and Flip were investigating.  Another aspect of the film I really liked is that it was presented as a comedy. Something as touchy as the Holocaust, the ...
Read more

Female Troubles: No Subject Too Sensitive

Viewing Female Troubles directed by John Waters felt like an ongoing manic episode, though I enjoyed that about it honestly, it didn’t hold back on it’s content. I can understand how some might not have been comfortable making through this, it’s not common to find in our media to be unfiltered in it’s dark and raunchy comedy. Some jokes would be distasteful or needed to be worded better to be more acceptable now, though I saw reason as to why the humor was taken to such crude and extra lengths to make fun of certain subjects or groups.  Any subject that was brought into this movie had to be made fun of, it had to be turned ridiculous.  If you heard anyone say a quote from this film in any serious context it would be viewed with concern. Though that’s part of the weird enjoyment you can get out of this, if you know this isn’t going to be serious, it’s labelled as a comedy for a reason. Not all of it is tasteful or going to be for everyone, but it doesn’t try to be, it’s not t...
Read more

Female Trouble: Trouble with a capital "T" that rhymes with "P" that stands for Pool

               Female Trouble (1974) is one of several films directed by John Waters and starring Divine that depict violence and sex so candidly that this is the first NC-17 rated film I’ve had the pleasure(?) of seeing. This was also one of the hardest films to watch as I was cringing through most of it and looking away at other times. Reasons for this being that I found the cinematography just as abhorrent as the grotesque visuals that I did see clearly. But to his credit, if I’m cringing at the sight of horrible people doing horrible things to other people then I guess John Water’s point has been made. And he gets this across while on a shoestring budget and the power of Divine and much like Natural Born Killers describes the rise to fame of criminals to celebrity status. I however don’t think Dawn Davenport (Divine) was as big of a star as she claims to be. Does she really get to be such a big celebrity that the whole nation goes bonkers...
Read more