Wild At Heart (1990)

Since this is a David Lynch film, it's not a surprise that "Wild at heart" is yet another bizarre portrait of pure madness. People constantly split when they see a movie like this and I have mixed feelings about it, too.
There is no doubt about the director's ingenious imagination and innovation. Lynch seemlessly crosses various styles and gernes from romance to dark comedy to road-movie to coming-of-age-drama to fairy tale to arthouse-splatter. Some call it a masterpiece, some call it weird art, and some think it's soulless or heartless garbage.

If you don't know whether to see it or not after this review just give it a try. The opening scene will probably determine if you will stay or leave right away. To say that the film starts furiously would be a criminal understatement. That most intense, ultra violent introduction combined with an equally intense, intoxicating heavy metal soundtrack gets your pulse right up to the max.

We jump forward in time when Lula (Laura Dern) passionately welcomes her lover boyfriend Sailor (Nicolas Cage) who just served his time in jail for what he had done in the first scene. Against her mother's wishes the young, carefree libertines start off on a roadtrip through the states to California to leave behind their past and detested home.

It's a B-movie that offers everything a "cult movie" needs. Two rebels on the run, dozens of bizarre characters, some brillant dialogue-sequences with lots of good one-liners, and of course a good amount of sex and violence.

Of course everything here, the performances and whole movie are totally over the top and intentionally so ... that is not the main problem. In the second half the film just could not hold together and satisfy.

When Lula's mother hires a killer to eliminate Sailor I really hoped for an intricate, enthralling finale.
For a short time it looks like that will happen. But what is meant to be the major conflict in the story ends up in an incoherent, unfocused mess. The story drifts apart and loses itself in dead ends.

Some of the minor roles lack in significance or they simply disappear again without having contributed anything to the story. For a while the film is nothing more than a freak show.

In the meantime the couple is struggling with their own business. But there is not enough potential for conflict there. Some flashbacks that hint at deeper mysteries are hardly implicated and rather ignored. They try to add background subtext that doesn't matter in the end.

Willem Dafoe appears in the role of the slimy, sneaky killer Bobby Peru. Like Dennis Hopper in Blue Velvet, he is someone you don't wanna ever meet in your life. He embodies pure evil and is also once refered to as "Black Angel". The film is overblown with symbolysm. Like Dafoe's character the mother of Lula, played by Diane Ladd, is totally overdrawn and literally appears as a witch.

The movie wants to be everything and still isn't something real. There are (as so often in Lynch's films for me) some wonderful, chilling individual set-pieces here and the first half of the film was really promising but as a whole I can't really recommend it, at lest not without strong reservations. It is just unfocused and all over the place and doesn't go anywhere. The film starts with an explosion and can't manage to put its pieces back together. There is no real or at least no satisfying pay-off and the final scene is totally cheesy. It may be wild at heart somewhere but it lacks clarity and its impact constantly fades.