Pittsburgh Post-Gazette from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania • Page 44

Ciller genes? Woody Harrelson's dad moonlighted as a hit man FILM This one's brutal CA il i I Sidney Baldwin Juliette Lewis and Woody Harrelson knock off 52 people throughout the course of Oliver Stone's "Natural Born Killers." Review by Marylynn Uricchio Post-Gazette Film Critic A nice woman called the office last week. "I just want to warn you. Don't see 'Natural Born It's really violent and it's really horrible." Well, yes. But Oliver Stone's mesmerizing new satire is also a brilliant piece of filmmaking. And there's the rub.

It's going to repulse audiences completely on one level people were leaving in droves throughout the screening I attended and yet it's a dazzling display of pure movie magic. It would be impossible to separate content from technique, since one is specific to the other the way Stone links them. But it's the best way to stomach the film. Stone never lets the viewer relax as he chronicles the tale of two serial killers who become media sensations. He forces us to share the chaos of their minds, through assorted visual tricks, and by re-creating a hallucinogenic state that defies narrative convention.

"Natural Born Killers" is quite simply the most shocking film I've seen since Stanley Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange." I remember watching that and being as repelled as I was captivated. "Natural Born Killers" works in much the same way, but it breaks new ground. Stone asks, You want violence? Here it is, in your face, as much as you can handle and then some, so much that you start reeling from the onslaught, becoming saturated and sickened and disgusted and then, curiously, immune. That's the whole point of the film. As a society we have become immune, which is exactly why we continue to be fascinated by the demon within.

Some quick clips of news footage at the end of the movie make this clear. There's O.J. Simpson, Tonya Harding, Waco, the Menen-dcz brothers on Court TV, not to mention the real stars like Manson and Jeffrey Dahmer. Stone notes that in the space of three short months this year, tabloid television shows like "Inside Edition" and "Hard Copy" broadcast a total of 45 programs on murderers, spree killers and their victims. What "Natural Born does is simulate our experience as receptors to all this violence.

It uses television and video images, animation, MTV-style montages, slow-motion, strobe motion, black and white, grainy super 8, hand held cameras, snapshots, headlines, slides, rear projection, digital special effects. In short, it bombards us with the kinds of images we're used to receiving on a daily basis, especially when it comes to the coverage of a sensational story. Stone is not out to make a cohesive narrative. He divides the film in half so that the first part follows the murders, the second the media aftermath. Everything about the film is hyper-real, starting with the characters.

The cops and the media are as nuts as the killers, and none of them arc sympathetic. They seem frighteningly familiar. Woody Harrclson and Juliette Lewis play Mickey and Mallory Knox, hot-blooded lovers, cold- By Robert Dominguez New York Daily News Woody Harrclson didn't have to dig too deep to research his role as a natural born killer his father, Charles, is a notorious hit man-for-hire currently serving a life sentence in an Atlanta federal penitentiary. A tall, dapper Texan with an eye for the ladies, Charles I Iarrclson once made a living as a dental-machine repairman as well as con man, card sharp and debt collector. He also moonlighted as a contract killer.

In 1973, Harrelson was convicted of killing a Texas grain dealer for a fee. Slapped with a 15-year sentence, Harrelson was paroled five years later and was back in a courtroom soon after. In 1979, he was hired by an accused drug dealer to murder San Antonio Federal Judge John H. Wood Jr. Harrclson shot him with a high-powered rifle outside the judge's apartment.

Three years later, still professing his innocence, Harrelson was sent away for life. Regardless of I larrelson's history and the length of his rap sheet (in yet another case, he was acquitted in the 1968 murder of a Texas businessman), Woody has reportedly maintained his father's innocence in the judge's murder and has kept in close contact with Charles, now 56. Woody, born in Texas but raised by his mother in Ohio after his parents' divorce, built a career playing goofy, amiable characters on TV's "Cheers" and in films like "White Men Can't Jump." But "Natural Born Killers" director Oliver Stone says there's a definite dark side to Woody that gave an extra dimension to the Mickey role. Stone mined or exploited that dimension in one particularly eerie scene. In an interview from prison, Woody-as-Mickey drawls to a live TV audience, "I came from violence.

My dad had it It's in my blood." In a case of art imitating life, truer words were never spoken. "Beneath the cutencss, I see the danger and the violence in Woody," says Stone. "His eyes are very interesting. I le's got a strong, intense, demonic look," Stone denies having to motivate Woody by having him relate to his father. "I didn't have to do that.

It's in his genes. Woody was comfortable inside that drawl." 'Natural Born Killers1 is a shocking, brilliant essay on violence KILLER DIRECTOR With "Natural Born Oliver Stone continues to force himself into the center of controversy. He has made a violent movie steeped in maxed-out surrealism. Here are excerpts from an interview Stone did with Robert Denerstein, of Scripps Howard News Service: On the violence: "You have to give people the virus before they develop the anti-virus. That's the argument.

I can't condone any kind of murder, but I try to show where the characters are coming from. In the motel room when they're making love, we see the century bearing down on them outside the window. A series of rearscreen projections show pictures of Hitler, Stalin, Vietnam and other assorted nightmares.) The whole century has created an oppressive, genocidal quality. Mickey and Mallory are the rotten fruit of that century." On the technique: "The fact that Mickey and Mallory are children of television gave us the freedom to switch styles as we wanted, whether it was the sitcom Mallory's past treated as a bizarre episode of a TV comedy or the fractured beginning in which Stone shows clips from old news broadcasts." On the actors: "I wanted them to handle firearms. I worked Juliette Lewis to the bone.

She's not that big a woman. I always like to keep moving. Afilm has a certain energy flow. We shot the picture in 54 days. We moved through the desert and New Mexico for the road sequences and then we moved right into Chicago for the prison "It was a very tough prison.

Eighty percent black. Mostly violent offenders. There was a gang system. The warden was very cool and allowed the prisoners to riot for a sequence in the film. To be honest, they got their rocks off.

It gave them a sense of release.1' blooded killers who embark on a bloodbath. In three weeks they kill 52 people waitresses, policeman, store customers, gas station attendants, even a bicyclist because "I've always wanted to do that." In between they frolic and fight and listen to the fabulous soundtrack produced by Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails. Drunk with bloodlust, Mickey and Mallory know right from wrong. "They just don't care," explains a shrink later in the movie. What gets them going is the murder of Mallory's abusive parents.

Stone depicts her home life as a sitcom, complete with a laff-track and Rodney Dangerfield as her father. Turns out he's sexually abusing Mallory, and the crude, almost unspeakable dialogue is horrifying in its glib setting. Once they get their first taste of blood, Mickey and Mallory want more. Killing is fun for them. It excites them and drives them on.

There's only one point when Mallory feels something akin to remorse when Mickey kills a kindly old Indian man who has tried to save them. "Bad, bad, bad, bad!" she shrieks at Mickey. The film shifts when Mickey and Mallory are pursued by Tom Sizemore, a detective who can think, and act, just like his quarry. When they're finally captured, in an elegiac shootout in front of a drug store, the emphasis is on the media frenzy that follows. Robert Downey Jr.

is terrific as Wayne Gale, an Australian tabloid show host who knows a ratings bonanza when he sees one. He talks his way into an exclusive interview with Mickey, and alternately berates and cajoles him for the benefit of the camera. It's Wayne's lucky day. A prison riot breaks out, which even the cocky, ovcr-the-top warden played by Tommy Lee Jones can't stop. "Natural Born Killers" is a savage movie, violent in the extreme and not for the squeamish.

The story is by Qucntin Tarantino, who far surpasses his grim view in "Reservoir Dogs." But Stone 1 doesn't glamorize the violence. Harrclson and Lewis turn in chilling performances as the vapid, thrill-seeking, amoral couple. Though we don't in any way identify with them, we can identify them. They don't seem much different from the kids who are interviewed in the movie who think Mickey and Mallory are "cool." In fact, they are very much a composite from the headlines. For every time you read a story and think, who could do a thing like that, Stone gives us an answer.

And that is what makes "Natural Born Killers" such a disturbing movie. 'NATURAL BORN KILLERS' Rating: for graphic violence, language and nudity Players: Woody Harrelson, Juliette Lewis, Tommy Lee Jones Director: Oliver Stone Critic's call: V4 a 4 Weekend, Aunuht.26, 1994.