
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, August 27, 1994                   TAG: 9408310022
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: By MIKE MAYO CORRESPONDENT
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

`KILLERS' IS A VICTIM OF ITS OWN EXCESSES

Like almost all of Oliver Stone's films, "Natural Born Killers" is compelling, stylistically rich and seriously flawed. Told with the pace and look of a rock video, it's a two-hour hallucination of violence - "A Clockwork Orange" taken to the nth degree.

Stone and co-writers David Veloz, Richard Rutowski and Quentin Tarantino mean the film to be a parody of contemporary attitudes toward celebrity criminals. At best, it's partially successful. At worst, it's a victim of its own excesses.

The plot is sketchy, and secondary to the overall style of the piece. This is not a conventional linear narrative. Stone uses several different film stocks and tricks to keep viewers off-balance - black and white, grainy color, negative images, rear projections, odd captions, crazy angles, tilted cameras, tinting. You can't sit back and "watch" this film; it's a direct assault on the eyes and ears.

The story - more accurately, the framework for Stone's ideas - concerns Mickey and Mallory (Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis), young lovers and mass murderers. They go off on a killing spree, are caught, become media/folk heroes and break out of jail. Their crimes are lionized by a tabloid TV producer (Robert Downey Jr.). Tom Sizemore is the twisted cop who pursues them. Tommy Lee Jones is the crazed warden who imprisons them.

Why do Mickey and Mallory kill?

Flashbacks presented as a TV sitcom tell us that Mallory's father (Rodney Dangerfield) and family abused her as a child. It's hardly news that victims often go on to become predators, so what else does Stone have to say on the subject? Not much.

At one point, Mickey says, "Killing you is a statement. I'm not sure what, but a statement." At another key moment, after Mickey has killed the film's only "good" character, Mallory pounds on him and says, "BAD! BAD! BAD! BAD!"

Perhaps Mickey and Mallory are the dark side of Forrest Gump, pure American evil as opposed to his pure goodness. Or perhaps they are merely extensions of our national love of romantic criminals that goes back to Billy the Kid and Bonnie and Clyde.

Audience opinions will differ. Stone loves to provoke controversy, and he's certainly done it here. At the same time, he has made a film that exploits the very exploitation it claims to deplore. How serious can his criticism of media "glorification" be when he casts a popular magazine coverboy like Harrelson in the lead?

In the end, after all the impressive visual wizardry has worn off, "Natural Born Killers" leaves a bitter aftertaste of hypocrisy.

BAD! BAD! BAD! BAD!

Natural Born Killers ** 1/2

by CNB