74
Metascore
20 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 100Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertChicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertLike all good satirists, he knows that too much realism will weaken his effect. He lets you know he's making a comedy. There's an over-the-top exuberance to the intricate crosscut editing and to the hyperactive camera.
- 88Boston GlobeJay CarrBoston GlobeJay CarrNatural Born Killers is going to be a love-it or hate-it film. But it's an important film. Pumped up, jumped up, yet asking the right questions, [it] is more than an attention-grabber. It's a grenade pitched into the media tent. [26 Aug 1994, p.51]
- 88Chicago TribuneGene SiskelChicago TribuneGene SiskelNatural Born Killers is visually complex and thematically simple. Mixing film and video, black-and-white and color, morphing and animation, Stone breaks visual ground here for a major studio release. [26 Aug 1994, p.B]
- 80The New York TimesJanet MaslinThe New York TimesJanet MaslinNatural Born Killers never digs deep enough. Mr. Stone's vision is impassioned, alarming, visually inventive, characteristically overpowering. But it's no match for the awful truth.
- 80Film ThreatMichael DequinaFilm ThreatMichael DequinaLove it or hate it for its content, one must concede that it is nothing short of a technical marvel.
- 78Austin ChronicleMarjorie BaumgartenAustin ChronicleMarjorie BaumgartenBerserk from the outset, Natural Born Killers lunges for our collective viscera in its opening sequence (surely one of the most brilliant establishing sequences of all time) and never lets go for the next two hours.
- 60Washington PostWashington PostOne doesn't leave this movie profoundly shocked about our collectively inured state, or the fact that Stone got us to laugh at caricatured violence. One merely leaves puzzled and wondering: Is that it? He's not telling us anything. He's riffing on a theme and--intentionally or not--contributing to the junk pile he supposedly decries.
- 50Washington PostHal HinsonWashington PostHal HinsonOur culture may be drifting toward the sort of calamity that Stone describes in Natural Born Killers, but the hysteria he depicts seems to come from within him. His soul is in turmoil and so he keeps trying to convince us that we're sick.
- 38ReelViewsJames BerardinelliReelViewsJames BerardinelliAs a satire on the media's infatuation with violence and murderers, Natural Born Killers hits the bullseye. The problem is, this is a one-note movie. It repeatedly hammers home the same point until the audience is bludgeoned into senselessness.
- 38Rolling StoneRolling StoneStone calls this bile satire. But satire takes careful aim; Killers is crushingly scattershot. By putting virtuoso technique at the service of lazy thinking, Stone turns his film into the demon he wants to mock: cruelty as entertainment.