Mickey and Mallory Knox
Encyclopedia
This lists the major characters in the 1994 film Natural Born Killers
. The characters were created by Quentin Tarantino
and the film was directed and co-scripted by Oliver Stone
.
.
As a child, Mickey was abused
by both his parents and witnessed his father commit suicide
when he was ten. Mickey is shown throughout the movie as an efficient killer, with knowledge of firearms and knife throwing. It is also shown that he knows how to kill with his bare hands such as the time in prison when he demonstrates killing a man by breaking his neck during a yoga session. Mickey is based on the infamous real-life spree killer
known as Charles Starkweather
.
.
As a child, Mallory suffered physical, verbal, emotional and sexual abuse at the hands of her father (played by the late comedian Rodney Dangerfield
). Mallory devotes herself to Mickey, stating he is her one true love. Mallory often tells stories and fantasies about her and Mickey living in paradise, to which Mickey often responds, "That is poetry". Of the two, Mallory seems to be the more aggressive, showing signs of being an uncontrolled psychopath with zero empathy for the people she kills. One example is when she and Mickey kill their last victim, Wayne Gale (Robert Downey Jr.
). Mallory continues shooting Gale repeatedly after he is dead.
.
Scagnetti is a successful detective who is revealed to be a tragic villain when he describes how he witnessed his mother being killed by Charles Whitman
when he was eight years old. Obsessed with taking revenge against criminals, he became a police officer, and eventually a public hero.
Behind his heroic facade, he is a sadistic misogynist and borderline vigilante
with nothing but disdain for the law he claims to uphold. He is also a murderer in his own right, having strangled a prostitute to death.
He reaches the height of his fame while pursuing Mickey and Mallory Knox. His pursuit of the Knoxes is covered extensively by tabloid reporter Wayne Gale (Robert Downey Jr.
) on his show American Maniacs. Scagnetti becomes particularly fixated on Mallory, and his frustrated sexual attraction to her further worsenes his rage. He eventually captures them in a shootout outside a drug store and profits immensely from the ensuing media acclaim, even writing a non-fiction crime book entitled Scagnetti on Scagnetti.
A year later, Scagnetti visits Mallory in prison and attempts to seduce her. Mallory attacks him and breaks his nose, starting a fight and forcing the guards to intervene. Meanwhile, a riot has broken out in the prison cafeteria and Mickey has escaped. During the chaos, Mickey finds his way to Mallory's cell in the solitary confinement
unit, kills the guards and saves her from the hands of Scagnetti after she slits his throat. Eventually, Mallory fatally shoots Scagnetti in the head with his own Desert Eagle
pistol, asking him, "Do you still like me now, Jack?"
Gale is a Golden Globe winning Australian journalist
who claims to be a personal friend of Bill Clinton
. Early in his career, Gale was a more respected journalist who covered international stories such as the Invasion of Grenada
. Eventually, he settled for hosting American Maniacs, a sensationalistic tabloid news show focusing on mass murder
ers. A vain, obnoxious, opportunistic narcissist
, Gale has nothing but contempt for his audience ("Repetition works; Do you think the morons out there in zombie land actually remember anything?") and does his job only for perks such as fame and money.
Ratings for American Maniacs go through the roof when Gale focuses the show on Mickey and Mallory Knox. He turns the two killers into international celebrities, all the while becoming incredibly wealthy and raising his own celebrity profile. When they are caught by Jack Scagnetti, he helps turn the detective into a star, conveniently ignoring the fact that Scagnetti is completely corrupt and just as violent as the Knoxes.
One year later, on Super Bowl Sunday, Gale interviews Mickey Knox on live television. During the interview, a riot breaks out in the prison cafeteria, forcing Gale to stop the broadcast. Mickey then grabs a shotgun
from a guard, takes the crew as hostages and tells them to go save Mallory. During the riot, Gale uses the camera to transmit live what happens in the riot. He publicly claims that the riot has spiritually reawakened him, leaving his wife for his Asian-American mistress (who left him during the riot due to his erratic behavior), and helps Mickey and Mallory escape from the prison. All of his crew are killed in the ensuing riot from gunfire.
After Mallory is saved and they escape from prison, she and Mickey tell Gale that he is going to be their last victim (with his camera as a witness), both citing the fact that Gale is nothing more than a self-centered person who exploits for his own personal gain. Gale panics and tries to run, but eventually resigns himself to his impending death, and allows them to kill him.
The inspiration for Wayne is actually based on real-life reporter Geraldo Rivera
; in fact, much of the character's interaction with the murderers Mickey and Mallory Knox was inspired heavily from Rivera's interview with Charles Manson.
.
Dwight McClusky is the temperamental and foulmouthed prison warden who oversees the lockdown of Mickey and Mallory Knox in the film's third act. An unappealing character in a cheap brown suit with unusual personal grooming because of a pencil-thin mustache and a devil-like hairstyle, McClusky runs the prison in a domineering way which often leads to his bouts of anger. McCluskey clearly loathes the criminals he oversees. His brutality is exemplified in one scene when an inmate lunges at another and McClusky quickly subdues the man by attaching a pair of pliers to his nostrils and keeping the pliers closed with a wire, before sending him off with the guards.
When the prison is overrun by prisoners during a riot, McClusky orders all guards on duty to fend off the convicts. His attempt to subdue Mickey and Mallory is thwarted when they hold a prison guard hostage. Mickey and Mallory manage to escape and keep McClusky and other prison guards locked between two corridor entrance doors. While locked inside, hundreds of convicts come charging at McClusky and the prison guards when the desperate warden tries climbing up the bars, and is pulled away and disappears into a sea of angry prisoners. He is then hacked to death and beheaded by the prisoners.
. The name of the character is a possible reference to Mitchell Red Cloud, Jr.
, a Congressional Medal of Honor winner from the Korean War
, explaining the appearance of the Medal of Honor in the wooden hut.
The Navajo man is an elderly and reclusive Navajo
Native American
, whom resides with his pre-adolescent grandson in a wooden hut in the New Mexico
desert. Mickey and Mallory encounter the Navajo man on his ranch while the two are lost in the desert. While the two are there, the Navajo man tries to expel the demons inside Mickey and Mallory's souls, before Mickey awakens in a fit of rage and fatally shoots the Navajo man with a .45 Colt Commander
pistol. Mickey unintentionally murdered him, and regrets killing him and feels remorse for doing so, believing him to be his only victim worthy of life.
.
Owen is a mysterious prisoner and Mickey and Mallory's guardian angel
/demon
. He is first seen at the roadside café where Mickey and Mallory Knox perpetrate their first massacre seen in the film, although fades away while the camera is focusing on him. He first encounters Mickey and Mallory during the prison riot, where he assists them by killing prison guards firing at Mickey and Mallory. He assists them in their escape, and treats Mickey and Mallory as if they were good friends of his. After Warden McClusky is seen being taken into a sea of angered prisoners, Owen is not seen or heard from again for the rest of the film. Though in the alternate ending for the film he acts as a form of "Karma" killing both Mickey and Mallory after they mocked him.
Natural Born Killers
Natural Born Killers is a 1994 crime/black comedy film directed by Oliver Stone about two victims of traumatic childhoods who became lovers and psychopathic serial killers, and are irresponsibly glorified by the mass media...
. The characters were created by Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Jerome Tarantino is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer and actor. In the early 1990s, he began his career as an independent filmmaker with films employing nonlinear storylines and the aestheticization of violence...
and the film was directed and co-scripted by Oliver Stone
Oliver Stone
William Oliver Stone is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. Stone became well known in the late 1980s and the early 1990s for directing a series of films about the Vietnam War, for which he had previously participated as an infantry soldier. His work frequently focuses on...
.
Mickey Knox
Mickey Knox is portrayed by Woody HarrelsonWoody Harrelson
Woodrow Tracy "Woody" Harrelson is an American actor.Harrelson's breakthrough role came in the television sitcom Cheers as bartender Woody Boyd...
.
As a child, Mickey was abused
Child abuse
Child abuse is the physical, sexual, emotional mistreatment, or neglect of a child. In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Children And Families define child maltreatment as any act or series of acts of commission or omission by a parent or...
by both his parents and witnessed his father commit suicide
Suicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...
when he was ten. Mickey is shown throughout the movie as an efficient killer, with knowledge of firearms and knife throwing. It is also shown that he knows how to kill with his bare hands such as the time in prison when he demonstrates killing a man by breaking his neck during a yoga session. Mickey is based on the infamous real-life spree killer
Spree killer
A spree killer is someone who embarks on a murderous assault on two or more victims in a short time in multiple locations. The U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics defines a spree killing as "killings at two or more locations with almost no time break between murders."-Definition:According to the...
known as Charles Starkweather
Charles Starkweather
Charles Raymond Starkweather was an American teenaged spree killer who murdered eleven people in Nebraska and Wyoming during a two-month road trip with his 14-year-old girlfriend, Caril Ann Fugate. The couple was captured on January 29, 1958...
.
Mallory Knox
Mallory Knox is portrayed by Juliette LewisJuliette Lewis
Juliette Lewis is an American actress and musician. She gained international fame for her role in the 1991 thriller Cape Fear for which she was nominated for both an Academy Award and Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress...
.
As a child, Mallory suffered physical, verbal, emotional and sexual abuse at the hands of her father (played by the late comedian Rodney Dangerfield
Rodney Dangerfield
Rodney Dangerfield , was an American comedian, and actor, known for the catchphrases "I don't get no respect!," "No respect, no respect at all... that's the story of my life" or "I get no respect, I tell ya" and his monologues on that theme...
). Mallory devotes herself to Mickey, stating he is her one true love. Mallory often tells stories and fantasies about her and Mickey living in paradise, to which Mickey often responds, "That is poetry". Of the two, Mallory seems to be the more aggressive, showing signs of being an uncontrolled psychopath with zero empathy for the people she kills. One example is when she and Mickey kill their last victim, Wayne Gale (Robert Downey Jr.
Robert Downey Jr.
Robert John Downey, Jr. is an American actor. Downey made his screen debut in 1970 at the age of five when he appeared in his father's film Pound, and has worked consistently in film and television ever since. During the 1980s he had roles in a series of coming of age films associated with the...
). Mallory continues shooting Gale repeatedly after he is dead.
Jack Scagnetti
Jack Scagnetti is portrayed by actor Tom SizemoreTom Sizemore
Thomas Edward "Tom" Sizemore, Jr. is an American film and television actor and producer. He is known for his roles in films such as Saving Private Ryan, Strange Days, Pearl Harbor, Heat and Black Hawk Down....
.
Scagnetti is a successful detective who is revealed to be a tragic villain when he describes how he witnessed his mother being killed by Charles Whitman
Charles Whitman
Charles Joseph Whitman was a student at the University of Texas at Austin and a former Marine who killed 16 people and wounded 32 others during a shooting rampage on and around the university's campus on August 1, 1966....
when he was eight years old. Obsessed with taking revenge against criminals, he became a police officer, and eventually a public hero.
Behind his heroic facade, he is a sadistic misogynist and borderline vigilante
Vigilante
A vigilante is a private individual who legally or illegally punishes an alleged lawbreaker, or participates in a group which metes out extralegal punishment to an alleged lawbreaker....
with nothing but disdain for the law he claims to uphold. He is also a murderer in his own right, having strangled a prostitute to death.
He reaches the height of his fame while pursuing Mickey and Mallory Knox. His pursuit of the Knoxes is covered extensively by tabloid reporter Wayne Gale (Robert Downey Jr.
Robert Downey Jr.
Robert John Downey, Jr. is an American actor. Downey made his screen debut in 1970 at the age of five when he appeared in his father's film Pound, and has worked consistently in film and television ever since. During the 1980s he had roles in a series of coming of age films associated with the...
) on his show American Maniacs. Scagnetti becomes particularly fixated on Mallory, and his frustrated sexual attraction to her further worsenes his rage. He eventually captures them in a shootout outside a drug store and profits immensely from the ensuing media acclaim, even writing a non-fiction crime book entitled Scagnetti on Scagnetti.
A year later, Scagnetti visits Mallory in prison and attempts to seduce her. Mallory attacks him and breaks his nose, starting a fight and forcing the guards to intervene. Meanwhile, a riot has broken out in the prison cafeteria and Mickey has escaped. During the chaos, Mickey finds his way to Mallory's cell in the solitary confinement
Solitary confinement
Solitary confinement is a special form of imprisonment in which a prisoner is isolated from any human contact, though often with the exception of members of prison staff. It is sometimes employed as a form of punishment beyond incarceration for a prisoner, and has been cited as an additional...
unit, kills the guards and saves her from the hands of Scagnetti after she slits his throat. Eventually, Mallory fatally shoots Scagnetti in the head with his own Desert Eagle
Desert Eagle
The Desert Eagle is a large-framed gas-operated semi-automatic pistol designed by Magnum Research in the U.S. and by IMI in Israel; the pistol is manufactured primarily in Israel by IMI...
pistol, asking him, "Do you still like me now, Jack?"
Wayne Gale
Wayne Gale is portrayed by actor Robert Downey, Jr.Gale is a Golden Globe winning Australian journalist
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
who claims to be a personal friend of Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton
William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation...
. Early in his career, Gale was a more respected journalist who covered international stories such as the Invasion of Grenada
Invasion of Grenada
The Invasion of Grenada, codenamed Operation Urgent Fury, was a 1983 United States-led invasion of Grenada, a Caribbean island nation with a population of about 100,000 located north of Venezuela. Triggered by a military coup which had ousted a four-year revolutionary government, the invasion...
. Eventually, he settled for hosting American Maniacs, a sensationalistic tabloid news show focusing on mass murder
Mass murder
Mass murder is the act of murdering a large number of people , typically at the same time or over a relatively short period of time. According to the FBI, mass murder is defined as four or more murders occurring during a particular event with no cooling-off period between the murders...
ers. A vain, obnoxious, opportunistic narcissist
Narcissism
Narcissism is a term with a wide range of meanings, depending on whether it is used to describe a central concept of psychoanalytic theory, a mental illness, a social or cultural problem, or simply a personality trait...
, Gale has nothing but contempt for his audience ("Repetition works; Do you think the morons out there in zombie land actually remember anything?") and does his job only for perks such as fame and money.
Ratings for American Maniacs go through the roof when Gale focuses the show on Mickey and Mallory Knox. He turns the two killers into international celebrities, all the while becoming incredibly wealthy and raising his own celebrity profile. When they are caught by Jack Scagnetti, he helps turn the detective into a star, conveniently ignoring the fact that Scagnetti is completely corrupt and just as violent as the Knoxes.
One year later, on Super Bowl Sunday, Gale interviews Mickey Knox on live television. During the interview, a riot breaks out in the prison cafeteria, forcing Gale to stop the broadcast. Mickey then grabs a shotgun
Shotgun
A shotgun is a firearm that is usually designed to be fired from the shoulder, which uses the energy of a fixed shell to fire a number of small spherical pellets called shot, or a solid projectile called a slug...
from a guard, takes the crew as hostages and tells them to go save Mallory. During the riot, Gale uses the camera to transmit live what happens in the riot. He publicly claims that the riot has spiritually reawakened him, leaving his wife for his Asian-American mistress (who left him during the riot due to his erratic behavior), and helps Mickey and Mallory escape from the prison. All of his crew are killed in the ensuing riot from gunfire.
After Mallory is saved and they escape from prison, she and Mickey tell Gale that he is going to be their last victim (with his camera as a witness), both citing the fact that Gale is nothing more than a self-centered person who exploits for his own personal gain. Gale panics and tries to run, but eventually resigns himself to his impending death, and allows them to kill him.
The inspiration for Wayne is actually based on real-life reporter Geraldo Rivera
Geraldo Rivera
Geraldo Rivera is an American attorney, journalist, author, reporter, and former talk show host...
; in fact, much of the character's interaction with the murderers Mickey and Mallory Knox was inspired heavily from Rivera's interview with Charles Manson.
Warden Dwight McClusky
Warden Dwight McClusky is portrayed by actor Tommy Lee JonesTommy Lee Jones
Tommy Lee Jones is an American actor and film director. He has received three Academy Award nominations, winning one as Best Supporting Actor for the 1993 thriller film The Fugitive....
.
Dwight McClusky is the temperamental and foulmouthed prison warden who oversees the lockdown of Mickey and Mallory Knox in the film's third act. An unappealing character in a cheap brown suit with unusual personal grooming because of a pencil-thin mustache and a devil-like hairstyle, McClusky runs the prison in a domineering way which often leads to his bouts of anger. McCluskey clearly loathes the criminals he oversees. His brutality is exemplified in one scene when an inmate lunges at another and McClusky quickly subdues the man by attaching a pair of pliers to his nostrils and keeping the pliers closed with a wire, before sending him off with the guards.
When the prison is overrun by prisoners during a riot, McClusky orders all guards on duty to fend off the convicts. His attempt to subdue Mickey and Mallory is thwarted when they hold a prison guard hostage. Mickey and Mallory manage to escape and keep McClusky and other prison guards locked between two corridor entrance doors. While locked inside, hundreds of convicts come charging at McClusky and the prison guards when the desperate warden tries climbing up the bars, and is pulled away and disappears into a sea of angry prisoners. He is then hacked to death and beheaded by the prisoners.
Navajo man
Warren Red Cloud, Sr., known as the "Navajo man", is portrayed by Russell MeansRussell Means
Russell Charles Means is an Oglala Sioux activist for the rights of Native American people. He became a prominent member of the American Indian Movement after joining the organisation in 1968, and helped organize notable events that attracted national and international media coverage...
. The name of the character is a possible reference to Mitchell Red Cloud, Jr.
Mitchell Red Cloud, Jr.
Mitchell Red Cloud, Jr. was a soldier in the United States Army during the Korean War...
, a Congressional Medal of Honor winner from the Korean War
Korean War
The Korean War was a conventional war between South Korea, supported by the United Nations, and North Korea, supported by the People's Republic of China , with military material aid from the Soviet Union...
, explaining the appearance of the Medal of Honor in the wooden hut.
The Navajo man is an elderly and reclusive Navajo
Navajo people
The Navajo of the Southwestern United States are the largest single federally recognized tribe of the United States of America. The Navajo Nation has 300,048 enrolled tribal members. The Navajo Nation constitutes an independent governmental body which manages the Navajo Indian reservation in the...
Native American
Native Americans in the United States
Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples in North America within the boundaries of the present-day continental United States, parts of Alaska, and the island state of Hawaii. They are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as...
, whom resides with his pre-adolescent grandson in a wooden hut in the New Mexico
New Mexico
New Mexico is a state located in the southwest and western regions of the United States. New Mexico is also usually considered one of the Mountain States. With a population density of 16 per square mile, New Mexico is the sixth-most sparsely inhabited U.S...
desert. Mickey and Mallory encounter the Navajo man on his ranch while the two are lost in the desert. While the two are there, the Navajo man tries to expel the demons inside Mickey and Mallory's souls, before Mickey awakens in a fit of rage and fatally shoots the Navajo man with a .45 Colt Commander
Colt Commander
The Colt Commander is a single-action, semi-automatic, magazine-fed, and recoil-operated handgun based on the John M. Browning designed M1911. It was the first mass-produced pistol with an aluminium alloy frame and the first Colt pistol to be chambered in 9mm Parabellum.Colt made several...
pistol. Mickey unintentionally murdered him, and regrets killing him and feels remorse for doing so, believing him to be his only victim worthy of life.
Owen Traft
Owen Traft is portrayed by Arliss HowardArliss Howard
Arliss Howard is an American actor, writer and film director.-Life and career:Howard was born in Independence, Missouri in 1954, and graduated from Truman High School and Columbia College at Columbia, Missouri. Howard established his career with stand-out roles in Full Metal Jacket and Ruby...
.
Owen is a mysterious prisoner and Mickey and Mallory's guardian angel
Guardian angel
A guardian angel is an angel assigned to protect and guide a particular person or group. Belief in guardian angels can be traced throughout all antiquity...
/demon
Demon
call - 1347 531 7769 for more infoIn Ancient Near Eastern religions as well as in the Abrahamic traditions, including ancient and medieval Christian demonology, a demon is considered an "unclean spirit" which may cause demonic possession, to be addressed with an act of exorcism...
. He is first seen at the roadside café where Mickey and Mallory Knox perpetrate their first massacre seen in the film, although fades away while the camera is focusing on him. He first encounters Mickey and Mallory during the prison riot, where he assists them by killing prison guards firing at Mickey and Mallory. He assists them in their escape, and treats Mickey and Mallory as if they were good friends of his. After Warden McClusky is seen being taken into a sea of angered prisoners, Owen is not seen or heard from again for the rest of the film. Though in the alternate ending for the film he acts as a form of "Karma" killing both Mickey and Mallory after they mocked him.