This is a movie which never appealed to me when it first showed at the cinemas, and which we only have on DVD because the boy reckons its a great movie, a classic (actually, I bought it for him for Christmas). I only watched it for the first time last night, and I have to say it was one of the more unpleasant movies I've seen.
I get that Oliver Stone was trying to make a statement about the imbecilic glorification of serial and mass murderers. All the same, I didn't enjoy the relentless violence used to make his point.
The killers, Mallory and Mickey, are horrible to everyone else but totally loving to each other. It's this romanticism of theirs, and possibly also their youth and physical attractiveness, which allows them to pump bullets into innocent people (that is, when they aren't raping them, knifing them or beating them senseless) and yet become popular heroes. I get that.
But I would've felt better if they'd come to a sticky end. I always prefer to see a bit of justice being done.
12 comments:
But don't you remember what the Japanese school girls said? 'Mickey and Malory so cool!!"
I didn't really like the movie either. It was just sensationalist trash. BTW- I heard the Oliver Stone got pulled over at a drunk driving checkpoint (it's a hiliday weekend here in the states) in Cali and got arrested for drug possession.
I sure do, jon. I don't think it was necessarily trash, just unnecessarily violent. Stone should be glad he didn't get caught with drugs in Bali - he'd had got a decade or two in prison.
Oliver Stone is a profesional Hurler of Anvils.
I would blame the thing where everyone thinks Americans are stupid on him if I didn't know that it was true even before him.
Like Dr. Doolitle, he endeavors to talk to the stupid.
Just saw my atrocious typing. I know how to spell, but I type too quickly and not that well, I might add.
And Bali is better than Indonesia or Malaysia, where many people get hanged, though they usually just deport foreigners. However, they like to set an example every once in a while.
Maybe Oliver Stone was using drugs to fill the void caused by the failure of his movie 'Alexander', though I've heard he's been in and out of rehab for years
Nigel: "he endeavours to talk to the stupid" - that could be a good thing or a bad thing. I bet your president endevours to talk to the stupid...
jon: We've had lots of stuff on the news lately about an Aussie beauty student who was caught with a ton of marijuana in her boogie board bag. She's gotten 20 years (although it was feared she'd get the death sentence, and the prosecutors are aiming for at least life in prison). Mostly it's big news 'cos she's pretty and young and possibly innocent.
D'oh! I reread my above comment and realized that Bali is part of Indonesia. I'm not stupid, I swear! ;)
i read an article for a sociology class a few months back, comparing natural born killers with a clockwork orange. aside from the main arguments, it also discussed the fact that mickey and mallory get away, and that we can see it in two different ways. first - that they did not get away, but actually die in the break out scene and this was just a crazy 'what if' moment, and the other way is to consider how even more dystopic it is to know they have children and they continue to destroy everything around them.
i didn't like the movie as much as most of the people i know. clockwork orange was a much better social satire/commentary.
jon: that's okay, I didn't even notice until you just brought it up. Lucky for you I'm not so detail-oriented (but don't tell any librarians or they'll never offer me a job).
hazel: I preferred A Clockwork Orange too, because to me it's more about dodgy social control than it is about irresponsible media. But also because it's a little surreal, so it's easier to distance myself from the violence and everything else.
I'm not a big fan of that movie either...I feel like I should be, for the reasons you say better than I could...but I'm just not. I may be the world's least biggest fan of both Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis.
Portuguesa: I find I have trouble with movies where the "heroes" aren't very nice people. Not that they have to be perfect, in fact flaws are preferred. But unrepentant murderers? Nah.
Woody Harrelson stinks. Juliette Lewis is worse. Oliver Stone might be even worse still. And that movie ranks in my list of the 10 shittiest ever.
Well it's really interesting that all the comments about the movie have so far been negative i.e. like mine.
We could probably all go out to the movies together and have no trouble picking one to see!
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