The Role: Mickey Knox (Woody Harrelson) Why Nic Cage Would Have Improved It: Oliver Stone's wild satirical thriller about two lovers who go on a nation-wide killing spree is better remembered for its ambitious style rather than its two central performances, even if Juliette Lewis and Woody Harrelson do admirable jobs in the roles of Mallory and Mickey Knox. What's interesting about the movie, though, is that for the most part, Harrelson gives a curiously restrained performance, when given Stone's over-the-top direction and Lewis' more out-there turn, there was certainly plenty of opportunity for Harrelson to go full psycho. For Cage, this could have been the next logical evolution from his role in Wild at Heart, approaching similar subject matter albeit in a far more extreme, go-for-broke manner. We can only imagine that Stone would have encouraged Cage to take Mickey's mania as far as possible, and this would only have enhanced the movie's trippy, off-the-page tone. As it stands, Natural Born Killers is a pretty underrated movie, but with Cage in the lead role, it could have been a classic.
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