Natural Born Killers (1994)

Credit: C/O

Oliver Stone tried to have it both ways in this ultraviolent killer-couple movie that tries to high-mindedly denounce sleazy tabloid TV while also being quite sleazy itself.

We’re meant to at least begrudgingly like — if not outright root for — serial killers Mickey and Mallory, played by Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis. (Stone is quoted saying in the 2016 book The Oliver Stone Experience that he cast the actors because he thought they could look trashy.) It’s also fun to watch Robert Downey Jr. as a sanctimonious sleaze.

The film was based on a screenplay by Quentin Tarantino that was so thoroughly changed that Tarantino has distanced himself from the film. (Not because it was a sleazy movie, mind you, but because Tarantino thinks the final film misunderstood his intentions.)

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