Director
Morgan J. Freeman
Cast
Jake Muxworthy………John
Lauren German………Gertie
Kelli Garner………Archer
Tom Sizemore………Dad
Gabriel Mann………Michael
DVD Release Date: December 11, 2007
Rating: R
Running Time: 87 Minutes
The Movie
John and Mike are two brothers that are so alike that it’s scary. They share the same ideas, the same mindset, the same mannerisms, and even the same taste for robbing and killing. As children they lost their mother at very young ages and their stranger of a father came back home to take care of them. He taught them everything they need to know about life including that people are like piggy banks. They work and work their entire lives for what they want and store it all away. To people like them, those working stiffs can simply be seen as piggy banks to be broken (killed) and get what they need (steal) when they want it.
It’s hard for them to trust anyone including each other at times, but they do as they please and continue on in their livelihood killing and stealing. Mike seems to have a wandering eye for the ladies and always seems to bring them around even though John is against it because they may have finally found a place to settle in and hang out a while. Needless to say, the girls arrive and a few murders later the boys are back on the run to find another place they can hide out in.
The issue of trust really hits home when they meet a girl named Gertie that they find out is really their half-sister. It seems their dad kept secrets from them like he never said he would and had another family. The boys weren’t sure what to think about it all and eventually John heads out to find Gertie and find out more about their dad’s long lost secret and whatever else he may have been hiding. Soon John gets a little too close to Gertie and he finds out that maybe they share more then just having the same father and a freakish incestuous (but not) feelings for one another.
Born Killers is a film that is trying incredibly hard to be sadistic and dark but fails on all counts. It isn’t a bad film by any stretch of the imagination, but I found it incredibly hard to keep paying attention. What could have been filled with blood, cool kills, and gore is watered down into something that shows the murders off screen or only in shadows making them far from impressive. At times John is shown threatening families with heated knives or strangulation, but it comes off as quite silly and not frightening at all.
The film is also dragged down by the almost constant narration that John gives throughout. There’s no real reason for him to explain what is going on when what happens on screen tells the story just fine. It is almost quite repetitive and ends up more annoying then helpful. Maybe the narration was to keep the film on track since it opts to jump around ridiculously and without a moment’s notice as to why. Yes I said the film isn’t bad, but it truly isn’t good either. You can try to watch it and not compare it to Natural Born Killers, but it won’t do any good. It’s going to happen.
The Video
The film is shown in 1.78:1 Anamorphic Widescreen format and looks decent enough. Colors are bright and there doesn’t seem to be any compression or transfer problems.
The Audio
The film is heard in Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound and kind of sucks. The dialogue, when it can be heard, sounds like it is echoing at all times and gets to be incredibly annoying.
Special Features
Trailers – Natural Bork Killers: Director’s Cut, Werewolf: The Devil’s Hound, Boy Eats Girl, Invasion, Skinwalkers, Shattered, and Fearnet.com
The Inside Pulse
Lionsgate has a way of really now knowing who they want to be when they release their DVDs. Either you end up with a fantastic DVD jam-packed with special features for a really good film that would have been bought anyhow. Or you end up with a barebones release of a film that no-one would even know exists unless they forget to type in the word “natural” while looking up what Woody Harrelson’s character’s name was in that other flick. With only some trailers and an incredibly lackluster film, don’t bother wasting even a rental on this one. I’m not quite sure that Born Killers even knows what kind of film it wanted to be so it ended up being a little bit of everything. It could have been more, but it wasn’t. But that’s like saying I could be rich, but I didn’t feel like it.
