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Review.

Most civilized societies have long since recognized the death penalty as barbarous, but not Americans. We are children of frontier justice--the law of talion at the end of a rope (or jolt of electricity or lethal injection)--that has been romanticized through the myths of the Western movies. John Wayne could take care of the world's social problems with his six-gun; why can't our wimp politicians do the same? The N.R.A. has sold the notion of mass murder as a national birthright. An AK-47 in every home. It's the American way.

In recent years this odd quirk has become a social nightmare. Movies and television provide an endless barrage of karate kicks, accompanied by ludicrous swishing sound effects to punctuate each blow. Special-effects explosions with bursting fire-balls and mutilated bodies distract from the moronic scripting. Little wonder children casually draw revolvers and kill one another with little awareness that death on the sidewalk is a bit different from mayhem on the screen.

Natural Born Killers, Oliver Stone's latest exercise in cinematic flatulence, tries to explore the relationship between violence and the media, but its end result is a bloody, vulgar exercise in what it purports to condemn. Its moral posture is reminiscent of those Bible epics of the 1920's that feature a 20-minute orgy sequence, followed by a 30-second denunciation by the prophet. A pack of adolescents in the theater roared hysterically at each new murder, little realizing that they, with their delight in movie bloodshed, were precisely the supposed object of Stone's social criticism. What does that say about Stone's clarity as a social critic?

The film offers the subtlety of a gruesome comic book, and in fact several brief animated interludes blend the main plot with horror-comic monsters. Capriciously switching from black-and-white to lurid color while the camera tilts and sways in seasick splendor, Stone constantly reminds his audience that it is watching an artifact, a construct of the media and his own imagination.

Since the story, as scripted by David Veloz, Richard Rutkowski and Oliver Stone, offers more fable that verisimilitude, the plot and characterization do not concern themselves with plausibility. Mallory (Juliette Lewis) appears in a grotesquely whorish outfit, obviously a victim of sexual abuse at the hands of her brutish father (Rodney Dangerfield). The outrageous family relationships are outlined in the lurid colors and with the canned laughter and inane dialogue of a television sitcom. Imagine "Ozzie and Harriet" on a bad acid trip. (To be fair, the contrast between the sitcom setting and the sickcom dialogue may be the most mordant bit of satire in the film.) Mallory eventually escapes from her nightmare existence with the help of Mickey (Woody Harrelson), who delivers a 50-pound bag of meat that drips blood on the living room carpet. After a short stay in prison he returns and helps Mallory murder her parents and thus discover the way to liberation.

Thus begins a crime spree that is "Bonnie and Clyde" as re-scripted by the Marquis de Sade. In each unmotivated multiple murder, they brutally eliminate all witnesses but one, so that someone will be able to recount their gestes to the police and, of course, to the media. They rather enjoy their lives. Unfortunately, after they lose their way in the desert, a friendly Navajo (Russell Means), who keeps rattlesnakes in his cabin, offers them shelter; but Mickey needlessly shoots him, thus bringing a muzzy-minded curse on the demonic dyad. (Shooting innocent Caucasians brings no such curse, since these are, after all, only rednecks.)

As their rampage unfolds, Mickey and Mallory hit the big time with Wayne Gayle (Robert Downey Jr.), an Australian version of Geraldo, who stars in a sleaze television magazine called "American Maniacs." Their murders are recreated with loving care by actors, but Mickey and Mallory are saddened to learn that the Charles Manson show has drawn higher ratings. Now that they are celebrities of gore, fans gather throughout the world to celebrate their exploits, brandishing M-and-M T-shirts and placards. "They're cool."

As the Navajo curse comes to fruition, after a bloody shootout the killers are arrested by a sadist cop, Jack Scagnetti (Tony Sizemore), and entrusted to the care of an equally dense warden, Dwight McClusky (Tommy Lee Jones). Both are cartoon figures with wildly styled hair and a polyester wardrobe that any nerd could envy. McClusky especially is shot in high-contrast black-and-white stock, so that with his exaggerated teeth and facial wrinkles he resembles a comic-book villain from the outtakes of a rejected Batman episode.

The story builds to a climax as the script explores the question of evil and violence. (Message! Message! Social-significance alert!) Are murderers responsible for their actions, are they the product of their environment, or are they simply "natural born killers"? Most terrifying of all is the possibility that they are merely products of the media: To be alive, really alive, is to enjoy a moment of celebrity. In its attempt to present these alternatives, the narrative becomes a tangle of blood-soaked confusion. A horrifying prison riot, complete with murder, fire, torture and mutilation, takes place in the context of a television interview, and the cameras keep rolling for the sake of the ratings.

In the end, Mallory suggests that perhaps the whole episode was staged for television, and we are left wondering if all the victims were sacrificed for good ratings, or whether none of it actually took place. The final scene shows these two brutal killers riding off into the sunset, since Stone's film has made them immortal heroes of mythic proportion. After all, says Stone, it's only a movie. No one really gets hurt.

Stone's visual experimentation is daring and exciting, but ultimately pointless. The gimmicks, like the images of violence in the natural and human world projected through windows behind the main dramatic events, the use of animation and luridly tinted stock, mask the thin analysis of the very important question he is trying to raise. Since both main characters arise from a cartoon background, it is difficult to regard them as anything but cartoons themselves. Is moral theology to be reduced to MTV, and if it is, is something lost in the transition?

This is a brutal, violent film that assaults the senses and offers only a few nuggets of compensation. Among them are the fine performances by Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis. Mickey is the more believable character. His skewed rationalization for his twisted view of reality and his psychopathic behavior become subversively persuasive at times. Mallory is the more mythic figure. Naive yet cunning, brutal yet vulnerable, she brings love into Mickey's life, while they casually dispatch their innocent victims.

What are we to make of Oliver Stone at this point in his career? Here's one theory. Born in 1946, he never outgrew his college-days experience of the 1960's. Enemies, namely the many faces of "the establishment," threaten us on all sides. In "Midnight Express" (1978) the police are needlessly brutal in repressing the drug trade; in "Platoon" (1986) the military and its obscene involvement in Vietnam is the villain, as it is again in "Born on the Fourth of July" (1989). "Wall Street" (1987) indicts the money merchants and "Reversal of Fortune" (1990) the courts. Now Stone turns his guns on the media, but he's shooting blanks.