Natural Born Killers (1994/Blu-ray/Warner
Home Video)
Picture:
B Sound: B Extras: B Film: B-
The year
1994 was a really interesting one for filmmaking. It marked one of the few times that I can
recall tons of hype being offered to two films for their violence alone, those
two films would be none other than Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction and Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers, which is based on a story by Tarantino. Since that time both films have grown from
cult films and icons of the 90’s to critical and commercial successes and it’s
really no surprise to fans of both filmmakers.
By the
time Natural Born Killers arrived
Oliver Stone was coming off some of his best work, namely JFK. This film would only be
rivaled a year later by the directors epic Nixon,
which still to this day is a highly underrated masterpiece of film. In many
respects NBK would be a departure
from doing several war films (Platoon,
Born on the 4th of July,
and Heaven & Earth), but it
would also serve as a film that seemed more like Stone speaking out, rather
than just showing his views of things through real events in history.
It’s
obvious through this film that the media and the hype that comes from that is
the focal point as we see a honeymoon couple go on a violent killing spree,
which is predominately caused by their dysfunctional upbringing. The film quickly reminds me of Bonnie and Clyde mixed with Leonard
Kastle’s seldom seen The Honeymoon
Killers. One of the more interesting
casting choices here was putting Woody Harrelson in the lead role as a
senseless killer, who has wit and charm as he woos innocent Juliette Lewis into
his world of brutality, but yet at the same time she is just as violent and
unstable as he is. Together they are
Mickey and Mallory Knox and in no time the media is in a frenzy over their
trail of bloodshed, but this couple is having a hard time keeping their love
together as things spiral out of control.
It’s both
refreshing and disappointing at the same time as this is one of Stone’s more
ambitious films, yet fails to have the resolution, depth, and deep character
study that his more successful and established films are. While one can appreciate his willingness to
try something else there are just certain films that are not easy to make and
execute well. This is one of those films
that starts off really great, but ends up not really knowing what to do with
itself once it realizes that it needs to go somewhere. Since its release Stone has rarely been able
to regain his knack with 1995’s Nixon
really being his last great film. U-Turn was a sloppy mess, Any Given Sunday had great potential,
but was too obvious in its agenda, Alexander showed great promise, but failed
to reach its epic proclamation. Perhaps his greatest failure was his 2006 film World Trade Center, which not only
trivialized the events of September 11th, but even attempted humor
in the most bizarre and inappropriate places.
The 1080p
1.85 X 1 image looks good overall, although I should quickly point out that
this film was shot with a variety of cameras and film stocks. Panavision cameras and lenses were used for
the 35mm portions of the film, but in order to create a gritty feel Stone and
cinematographer Robert Richardson went with filming some segments in 16mm and
8mm as well. Richardson is one of the
few cameraman that can pull this off well and has worked on almost every Stone
film to date as well as notable work with Martin Scorsese on Casino, Bringing Out the Dead, The
Aviator, and the most recent Shine A
Light, plus he has worked on projects like Tarantino’s Kill Bill series. It’s fair to say his resume is highly
respectful and his work here showcases that just as well and makes this film
work from a visual standpoint. This film
not only contains 35mm, 16mm, and 8mm scenes, but also a few video segments
that are standard NTSC ‘news’ segments.
One thing
that should be pointed out here is that despite how good 35mm Panavision looks,
the 16mm and 8mm segments should not be overlooked when in the hands of a masterful
cameraman, which is the case here. The
film accomplishes a lot with it’s variety of film formats and achieves the
gritty and amateur-ish style that fits and makes sense, which has led to many
failed attempts of this same effect ever since.
Overall the Betacam SP, scooptic 16, spherical 35mm, and Super 8
translate well onto Blu-ray in 1080p fashion.
I was surprised by the color fidelity overall and the saturated look at
times, not only is detail sharp and defined, but very 3-D at times. The character of the film stocks is never
loss, in fact they are greatly enhanced over the DVD’s that have been released
over the years, which were far too pixilated and smudgy with their
transfers.
The Dolby
TrueHD 5.1 soundtrack is as impressive as the overall picture quality and while
both will never necessary be ‘reference quality’ they do perform well enough on
Blu-ray and certainly out-perform all previous home video releases. Sonically the film is never that challenging,
so dialogue is heavily in the front with music and other effects filling the
surround stage during appropriate times.
This
appears to be (with it’s 119 minute runtime) the same as the theatrical cut
that was first pressed to the 12” LaserDisc, VHS and eventually the first run
of DVD’s, which later on was issued to DVD in a ‘Directors Cut”, which ran
about 4 minutes longer and contains footage that inevitable had to be cut in
order to retain the “R” rating certificate.
Most of them are quick extensions to the violent scenes and really only make
the film more graphic. It’s a shame that
with the storage abilities of Blu-ray that both versions were not available on
this release, despite the fact that additional scenes and an alternate ending
are included as part of the extras. Fans
will mostly be disappointed as one of the aspects of this film that sells is
the violent nature of it and cutting out some of that will make it feel less
complete.
Stone
provided both a commentary and an introduction to the deleted scenes for the
film, which are likely the same from the DVD release, there is also a Charlie
Rose Show interview segment and theatrical trailer for the film. There is a really great booklet that serves
as the Blu-ray packaging and contains some great stills and loads of
information about the film, which is a nice addition to this set and this will
perhaps make up for the non-Directors Cut version arriving on Blu-ray first.
- Nate Goss
