While it is not difficult to admire the bravura technical panache of NBK, I have to say that I didn't find it very interesting. Nothing about the film appealed to me, least of all the story or characters (if that isn't too simple-mindedly old-fashioned). There is *barely* a story there, and the director's lack of interest is clear from the way the couple's romantic difficulties appear and disappear without any resolution (about halfway through the film). The only character I found interesting was the Native American, although this character also smacks of Stone's half-baked mysticism. Further, the mish- mash of film stocks was so non-stop that I quickly started screening it all out. As an occasional device, I think it's effective, but it was so over-the-top that it stopped having any significance. This may seem like an absurd criticism, since Stone is so incoherent that "significance" is not what he's aiming for. IMPORTANCE, yes. The key line in the film for me is towards the end when the hero and heroine explain to the tv journalist that they're making a statement, but they don't know what it is. Ditto Stone. He's certainly self- aware enough to know this is the case, too. NBK is not a critique of violence and the media--it's a valentine. Stone gets so high on what he's supposedly satirizing that the satire or commentary disappears. Which raises an interesting critical issue: namely, reflexivity does not always produce critique or critical distance. Rather, the distance between what's being sent-up and the send-up diminishes to the point where the difference is negligible. NBK is such a tired re-tread of so many cliches, from Gun Crazy to Badlands to Bonnie and Clyde, that it's difficult to watch as a movie. I felt like the director who supposedly saw The Third Man and sent Carol Reed a level--so he would stop with all the canted angles. As for Oscars, I think the film is probably too far out to get much recognition from the Academy, which prefers a more tame form of "seriousness." Edward R. O'Neill