Kalifornia is a pretty solid thriller that showcases Brad Pitt's talent as an actor early in his film career. David Duchovny of X Files fame and his girlfriend Michelle Forbes hit the road for California and on the way stop at murder sites to collect information and photographs for their book about serial killers. To make the trip affordable, they put an ad out for someone to accompany them on the trip and share the costs of travel. Earl responds to the ad and brings his girlfriend Adele(Juliette Lewis) with him. Knowing nothing about their new traveling companions, Earl turns out to be one of the psychotic killers Brian(David Duchovny) is writing about. Pitt, known as one of Hollywood's most hunky pretty boy actors gives a tremendous and convincing performance as a southern fried, trailer trash psycho killer. This is very similar to Oliver Stone's film Natural Born Killers which came out a year later and also starred Juliette Lewis, whose character in that film is also similar, but much more passive in this. Natural Born Killers is a better film, but is much different in the way it was approached. Kalifornia is told in a much more straight forward manner and is less stylized and devoid of the black humor and satire that was prevalent in that film. With that said, I still like this film and Kalifornia is a solid thriller that is underrated and worth checking out.
Review of Kalifornia
