THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, September 10, 1994 TAG: 9409090112
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Movie Review
SOURCE: By Jon Frank, Staff writer
LENGTH: Long : 190 lines
DON'T LET ANYONE TELL you that the villain gets away scot-free in Oliver Stone's controversial new film, ``Natural Born Killers.''
It is true that the film twists conventional wisdom, allowing Mickey and Mallory, the movie's mass-murdering couple, to evolve into middle-class respectability after running roughshod across America in a 52-person killing spree. Parents, cops and innocent bystanders are among their victims, expiring amid a swirl of technical razzle-dazzle and bravura story-telling turns.
The violent rampage gets the killers neither life in prison nor the death penalty. Instead, they get a motor home. Mickey and Mallory are seen at the film's conclusion cruising with their kids, apparently on some kind of family-style, wholesome vacation.
But an execution does take place in this film. In the convoluted world of ``Natural Born Killers,'' the real villain is the tabloid television reporter who brings the story of Mickey and Mallory to the viewing public by following their bloody trail of terror across the American Southwest. As the film nears its end, Mickey and Mallory commit their final act of violence when they kill the reporter execution style.
The reporter, Mickey claims, deserves to be killed, because he cared only about ratings and relished the fact that murder and mayhem helped his program's ratings soar.
To be sure, Oliver Stone is mining a deep satirical vein and probably doesn't expect the film to be taken literally. He has succeeded in at least one way: The film is near the top of the nation's box-office competition, beaten out last weekend only by the sweet-natured ``Forrest Gump.''
But Stone's upside-down, apocalyptic vision of American society fell flat with a group of Hampton Roads viewers asked to share their responses after watching the film with a critical eye.
Most of them found ``Natural Born Killers'' full of gratuitous violence and inappropriate humor. They didn't buy Stone's thesis that somehow all of society is guilty of wallowing in the violence perpetrated by Mickey and Mallory, and their real-life counterparts, the Menendez brothers, Charles Manson and the killer or killers of Nicole Brown Simpson.
And for at least one viewer, the movie seemed to mirror her own horrifying experience in the mean streets of Portsmouth last March.
``I was really angry when I left the movie theater because it was like it was saying it was OK to go out and kill these people,'' said Leslie D. Thomas, a Portsmouth resident who along with her brother was kidnapped last spring from her home by two men. One of the men later killed her brother.
The movie, Thomas said, seems to be saying that killers can ``get off and go down the road and have a family and live happily ever after.''
Whatever comments Stone might be making about the media and their fascination with violence was obscured for Thomas and other viewers by the confusing moral message of the movie. There may not be many good guys in the film, but the very baddest of the bad guys are the ones who win in the end.
Norfolk General District Court Judge Charles Cloud agreed that the movie's mixed-up moral message ultimately caused the film not to succeed. The behavior of many in the audience disturbed the judge greatly.
``In my mind, it fails miserably as a satire,'' Cloud said. ``A satire should unify everyone and bring about change for the good. Here the movie missed its mark because I can't see how anybody could change and make things better because of it. It polarized the audience. When the prisoners did something to the guards, they liked it. Some people were cheering when the police were murdered in cold blood.''
``I don't think these people should be glamorized, and I think they are in this movie,'' added Cloud's wife, Jan, who accompanied her husband to the movie. ``Obviously sensationalism sells, and the media feeds into that. It is a vicious cycle. But where does it stop?''
``This was just plain wicked and low-down,'' said the Rev. Leroy Briggs of Norfolk's Mount Gilead Baptist Church. ``Everything that human beings should be against, it promotes - incest, killing parents, killing for no reason. . . all.''
But even the most critical viewers conceded that Stone illuminated the Catch-22 that exists in a society with a free press - the bottom line often dominates decisions about what gets covered by the media, and nothing sells better than violence and sex.
``It seems the public has a fascination with violent behavior,'' said Clare Houseman, an associate professor in the college of Health Sciences at Old Dominion University. ``And Oliver Stone is just kind of mirroring that to us. There is a kind of partnership between the public and the media because the public is asking for it, and the media is providing it. The showing of the film at the theater where I saw it was nearly full, so it clearly is a popular show and there must be a demand for this kind of movie. The question is whether the media should make some kind of decision about what's best for the public.''
Alotha Willis, assistant commonwealth's attorney in Portsmouth, argued that the media simply give the public what it wants.
``Somebody is looking and somebody is listening,'' Willis said. ``That is why there is ``Hard Copy'' and ``A Current Affair.'' Somebody tells them that people are paying attention to this.''
``I think the line between the real media and the entertainment media is becoming fuzzier and fuzzier,'' added Lou Lombardo, a colleague of Houseman's at ODU who specializes in violence. ``I think it is really getting difficult to see the difference between ``Hard Copy'' and CBS News, between a tabloid paper and a regular paper.''
Lombardo said that Mickey, the Woody Harrelson character, used the movie's reporter, played by Robert Downey Jr., in a way that was exaggerated but not far-removed from reality. The real-world media, Lombardo believes, are concerned primarily with image and are used by those in society who are sophisticated and instinctively shrewd.
``Mickey could manipulate this guy,'' Lombardo said. ``He used this guy and took advantage of everything this guy stood for. And what happened? This guy started drawing on Mickey. Mickey knew it was baloney. That is where the problem is. The media doesn't deal in substance. It deals only in image.''
Even Thomas had to admit that the casual way in which the killers chose their victims and committed their crimes jibed with her own horrifying experience of last March.
``It really got to me. . . the way they killed any and everybody,'' Thomas said. ``In the beginning of the movie, when they were at the diner and the girl is going ``eeny-meeny-miney-moe'' between the waitress and the other man. and just let me kill you and you'll be over with.' And what's left? A head stone and a bunch of pictures and memories. What about the victim's life?''
Aisha Durham, a 17-year-old senior at Lake Taylor High School, agreed that Stone has depicted in an accurate way many of the unattractive elements of American society.
``It does happen in society,'' Durham said. ``It's just like when they showed all the policemen beating up that man. And then at the end of the film, they showed a clip of Rodney King. So the movie is not saying that it doesn't happen, because it does.''
Other viewers found themselves laughing despite the orgy of violence on the screen.
``It was kind of interesting to me that it was portrayed in a humorous way,'' said Clare Houseman. ``I laughed; that is the curious part. I laughed, and then I said, `What am I laughing about? That isn't funny.' ''
Houseman said it made her realize how one of Stone's themes applied directly to her own experience. She has been numbed to media violence since the early 1970s when she walked out of ``The Godfather'' because it was so violent.
``I didn't have that experience this time, Houseman said . ``Over the years, you kind of get used to it.''
But two Portsmouth detectives stayed through only the first 30 minutes before walking out.
``I like movies, especially action movies,'' explained Sgt. Dickie Harvey, ``And for the last 17 years, I've done homicide investigations, so I've seen all the different sides of death, and I've seen the real sickies that are out there. Whoever made this movie must have thought it was entertaining. But that's not entertainment to me.''
On their way to the lobby, the policemen said, a theater attendant stopped them to ask if they were leaving early. When they said yes, the attendant correctly guessed the film they left.
``He said a lot of people had been leaving `Natural Born Killers,' '' Harvey said.
Although Harvey did not think that the film's ambiguous moral message would inspire people to be violent, others weren't so sure.
``I think there are a lot of copycats,'' said Briggs. ``People see things, and they try it. They see this movie, and at the end they see the couple riding away with a couple of kids. . . and they say they got away with it. They say that everything they have done is all right. They've got an RV and are just riding off down the street in the sun.''
But Cloud said he suspects that Oliver Stone intended his message to be so depraved and so amoral that viewers would be sickened by what they saw.
``I hope that the message the director wanted to get out is that all the people who went and laughed should not have gone, they should have stayed home,'' Cloud said. ``I hope he meant to show that when ``Natural Born Killers'' becomes a number one movie, it shows how sick society is.'' MEMO: EVALUATORS OF ``NATURAL BORN KILLERS''
Charles R. Cloud, judge, Norfolk General District Court.
Jan Cloud, wife of Judge Charles R. Cloud.
Rev. Leroy Briggs, pastor at Norfolk's Mount Gilead Baptist Church.
Lucien Lombardo, professor of criminal justice at Old Dominion
University.
Clare Houseman, associate professor in the College of Health
Sciences, Old Dominion University.
Aisha Durham, senior at Lake Taylor High School.
Leslie Dawn Thomas, a 20-year-old Portsmouth resident who was
abducted in March from her home by two men. Her brother, Wayne L.
Thomas, 25, was also abducted and was murdered by one of the men in
North Carolina. Leslie escaped.
Alotha Willis, Portsmouth assistant commonwealth's attorney.
Sgt. Dickie Harvey, homicide detective, Portsmouth Police
Department. ILLUSTRATION: Color photos
Leslie D. Thomas
Judge Charles Cloud
Rev. Leroy Briggs
by CNB