One of a crop of
Quentin Tarantino scripts which were suddenly
filmed by other directors when
Reservoir Dogs and
Pulp Fiction became successful.
Tarantino's script is a romance about a couple of mass murderers. The script contains a lot of violence, but you get the impression that Quentin just thinks it's cool for them to be cold motherfuckers.
Oliver Stone took this script and turned it into a crazy, chaotic, psychedelic trip of a film, while simultaneously satirising the media: TV and tabloid journalism in particular.
In Stone's vision, the violence is horrific (as he keeps repeating, he's seen Vietnam first hand), yet the media sells it as entertainment. To a great extent, it is the media which has primed Micky and Mallory to be psychotic killers (that and their abusive families).
Isn't it ironic (don't you think) that NBK itself was blamed for several murders -- personally I suspect opportunistic psychos looking for an excuse.