I can't resist putting my two cents in on this one.
 
I saw the film last night and approached it with caution -- I've never
seen an Oliver Stone film I actually liked, finding them often
simplistic, overbearing, and predictable.
 
However, I Stone makes this film work on many different levels.  Much has
been written here about NBK's apparent "glorification of violence", but
that boils down to how the viewer identifies with Mickey and Mallory.
Ask yourself:  if Mickey and Mallory were real people given an unlimited
amount of money, how would they tell their own story?  They would use the
language most familiar to them, that of trash television and likely MTV in
particular.  If the viewer wants to know why the pair commits murder,
they should look beyond their troubled childhoods to the language of how
the story is told.  Stone is simply saying that the media, by making
celebrity of violence, makes people like Mickey and Mallory possible.
(They do have a kind of twisted logic and code of honor they attach to
the killings that makes little sense -- but who said mass murder had to
be logical or even palitable.)
 
Many influences can be seen in the film -- "Bonnie and Clyde" and David
Lynch's "Wild Heart" to name two -- but Stone uses the storytelling
device (ie, the experimental MTV-style filmmaking) to also create an
homage to the pioneers of experimental film that brought these devices
into our film/TV language.  NBK seems to have much in common with the
early films of John Waters -- grotesque, almost comedic, violence;
explorations of the celebrity of mass murder.  Even the final scene with
Morton Downey, Jr. is reminiscent of the final murder committed by Divine
in "Pink Flamingos" in its dialogue and realization.
 
 
I have to admit that I felt guilty about enjoying a film that had so much
violence in it.  However, the viewer has to approach NBK on the same
level as the Waters films -- it is so grotesque that it becomes parody.
The danger is that young people seeing the film don't think about these
influences and what Stone is doing.  It was much more disturbing to hear the
giggles and guffaws of the teenagers in the cinemall audience in all the
wrong places than what was happening on-screen.
 
Randy A. Riddle
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