Natural Born Killers (1994)

After murdering her parents (Rodney Dangerfield, Edie McClurg), an escaped convict (Woody Harrelson) and his teenage girlfriend (Juliette Lewis) go on a killing spree in the American Southwest. Based on an original screenplay by Quentin Tarantino that was subsequently rewritten by the films director Oliver Stone, David Veloz and Richard Rutowski. The first half of the film is brilliant, an audacious overheated surrealistic pitch perfect black comedy with great blasts of violence. It's unlike anything Stone has done before or since and if Stone's name wasn't on the film, one would assume it was directed by Tarantino or Robert Rodriguez. Alas, the second half of the film goes out of control and becomes increasingly self indulgent. The first half was over the top but it had one foot in something resembling reality while the second half gives us full cartoon caricatures with Tommy Lee Jones shamelessly hamming it up as a prison warden and perhaps worst of all, Robert Downey Jr. with a bad Australian accent. It was clear in the first half that Stone was trying to make a statement about violence in America but in the second half, it's as if he didn't trust his audience to "get it" and he hammers it home. Harrelson and Lewis are chillingly good but they still can't save the second half. That being said, it's still probably Stone's best film. With Tom Sizemore, Arliss Howard, Mark Harmon, Joe Grifasi, Balthazar Getty and Russell Means.