From one extreme to the other, Stone followed up the mellow Heaven & Earth with this bastardized adaptation of a Quentin Tarantino script. Natural Born Killers follows a mass murdering delivery boy named Mickey Knox (played by Woody Harrelson in a role about as far removed from his stint on Cheers as you can get) who falls in love his customer's daughter, Mallory (Juliette Lewis).

After they fall for each other, Mickey kills her sexually abusive father (the late Rodney Dangerfield in his sleaziest performance ever!) and her mother (Edie McClurg) and whisks her off on a whirlwind trip across the country, killing almost everyone they come into contact with though always leaving one person alive report back to the media. This enables them to become media superstars as their images are plastered all over the television, newspapers, magazines, and radio.

A Geraldo-style investigative reporter Wayne Gale (Robert Downy Jr.) decides to boost his ratings by interviewing them in prison once they're apprehended. The cop in charge, Jack Scagnetti (Tom Sizemore), has plans of his own however and things take a turn for the worse. A prison riot ensues and Mickey and Mallory take Gale hostage and use him as leverage against the warden (Tommy Lee Jones at his most manic) and as a tool for their ultimate media feeding frenzy.

Some say the film is an exercise in style over substance with its rapid cutting (there are rumored to be over three thousand edits in the film), nearly subliminal images and use of mixed media but Natural Born Killers functions quite well as a black satire on 'serial killer culture' and how the American press embraces such atrocities and disasters. Case in point, Wayne Gale's tendency to sensationalize and exploit the events portrayed in the film all in order to achieve higher ratings with no regard for human life. While the movie consistently bashes you over the head with its message (calling it heavy handed would seem to be an understatement), it is never less than sheer entertainment even when it's preaching at you. Stone lets loose with both barrels in an ultra-violent exercise in satirical excess.

The film also benefits from some excellent performances, with Woody Harrelson really stealing the show. Imagine catching this one in the theater and seeing the kindly bartender from Cheers killing his way across the country, tripping on hallucinogenic drugs and having rough, surly sex! This was very definitely a career changing film for Harrelson who has gone on to tackle some challenging roles, the most obvious example being his lead performance in The People Vs. Larry Flynt. Juliet Lewis is a little too over the top in some scenes and borders on the obnoxious but in the context of this already over the top film, her efforts seem to fit. Tommy Lee Jones is fantastic as the prison warden, frothing at the mouth and spitting his way through the riot scene chewing as much scenery as he can get his nicotine stained teeth through. Throw in some sleazy performances from Robert Downey Jr. and Tom Sizemore and you've got a very solid lead cast who handle the material very well.

Unfortunately this is the R-rated directors cut, and it doesn't feature the excised scenes that made it into the longer, more violent, and superior director's cut that is currently only available on standard definition DVD.

Video:

Natural Born Killers is presented in a 1080p VC-1 1.85.1 anamorphic widescreen transfer that preserves the picture's intended theatrical aspect ratio. This transfer does a decent job with some funky material. If you've seen the movie before you know that the movie makes use of traditional film but also various other video formats so you can't realistically expect the consistency of a picture that was completed using one format. Some scenes look nice and sharp, other scenes (the cut to the Coca-Cola polar bear commercial for example) looks like a VHS tape. The black and white footage is grainy while much of the color footage is nice and clear. There is a little bit of print damage throughout showing up in the form of the odd speck here and there but that's rarely distracting. Color reproduction is all over the place, but again, this is how the movie has always looked and this is how the movie is supposed to look. There's considerably more detail present on this Blu-ray release than there was on the SD release and you'll really notice this on facial close ups and medium shots more than you will when looking at objects in the background which still look a little bit soft. There aren't any compression artifacts to worry about nor is there much in the way of edge enhancement to notice. If you're familiar with the film, you'll very likely be quite pleased with the picture. If you've never seen it before, well, this is a weird looking film and the transfer replicates that.