Natural Born Killers Analysis

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For my film project I chose, Natural Born Killers, (1994) the film stars Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis as the notorious couple Mickey and Mallory Knox. The film follows Knox’s on their cross-country murder spree that captivates the world as the media glorifies their crimes making them the most infamous serial killers since Manson. Natural Born Killers starts out in a small diner in the middle of the desert, Mickey is ordering pie and Mallory is dancing to a jukebox, a couple of locals enter and one starts flirting with Mallory causing her to kick the crap out of him. Its when his friend jumps in that Mickey springs into action killing him and everybody else in the restaurant along with them. After the gruesome killings the Knox’s embrace …show more content…
From the beginning the first time she disobeyed her abusive father was after meeting Mickey. The only time she ever actually stood up to her father was after he and Mickey were fighting and it became a choice between the two. Once they connected they fed off each other, encouraging the worst parts of the others personality to come out. The more time they spent together the more they acted similar. For example, when Mickey was showing affection to the hostage that was naked in the corner, Mallory’s response was to go out and hook up with somebody herself. You see just how strong Mickey’s personality is when TV personality Wayne Gale kills guards himself during the riot screaming, “I’ve never felt so alive.”
As for Mickey himself he says it during the interview “I mean I came from violence, it was in my blood. My dad had it his dad had it.” Then again at the end of the interview when he say’s “I’m just a natural born killer” and unintentionally starts the riot. We see in the flashback that Mickey’s dad shot himself in front of him after what we can only assume was a lifetime of crime. Living through that would leave anybody emotionally scarred and a kid going through it alone without help is more often then not going to have psychological problems later
…show more content…
In this case the media wanted a story and Mickey and Mallory wanted to be stars. The fact that they always left a person alive was simply vanity, they wanted people to know it was them. The media so desperate to get ratings made them into gods in the eyes of the public the constant coverage seemed to make what they were doing almost okay. The very reason there was even a riot is that Gale wanted an interview. This split the guards focus allowing the riot to start and then cause them to under protect the civilians leading to the escape of the Knox’s. Furthermore the system we have with cops makes them need villains in order to keep their jobs. This need is played out in Scagnetti’s obsession with Mallory, which would ultimately lead to his downfall.
I believe the movie was produced to showcase the negatives to the media’s glorification of villains, especially serial killers. From Manson to Bundy, American media has had a long history of making these sick individual look almost cool making people want to be like them. As well as to showcase the dangers that having police jobs being secured by amount of illegal activity stopped, this leads to cops needed to have criminals around giving a reason for them to become dirty and take

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