Los Angeles Times

The legacy of 'Natural Born Killers': Oliver Stone and Juliette Lewis on ultra-violence and media hysteria

It's been 25 years since Oliver Stone's "Natural Born Killers" caused a stir when it hit theaters, but the violent tale of lovers-on-the-run mixed with a vicious media satire still feels controversial today.

In the movie Harrelson and Lewis play Mickey and Mallory Knox, a young couple who embark on a wild crime spree that winds up making them the center of a worldwide media storm. The film's outrageous style, mixing film formats with a high-density editing strategy, made it visceral and shocking.

As Times critic Kenneth Turan put in his original review, the film is "both audacious and astonishing, a vision of a charnel house apocalypse that comes close to defying description." Turan also called it, "the movie Oliver Stone was born to make, and if that statement is a knife that cuts both ways, so be

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