But they will probably agree that Lynch saved all his best stuff for earlier.

But when Sailor and Lula go on the run, so does the movie.įor stalwart Lynch fans, the initial intensity (which includes a fantastic music score, from symphonic to raucous) may have enough momentum to keep them going till the end. When the couple escapes south, she hires her detective-boyfriend (Harry Dean Stanton) and a mafioso old flame to kill Sailor and bring her baby back. Here, he's Sailor Ripley, an oddly endearing kid, who lives for Elvis and his snakeskin jacket, but mostly for girlfriend Lula (Dern), a goofily sensual, chainsmoking white-trash rebel princess.Īfter Sailor kills someone brutally, but in self-defense, Dern's demented mother (played by Dern's real mother, Diane Lane) vows that Sailor will never see her daughter again. Cage, the second weirdest American male working in the movies today (hey, nobody can out-weird Crispin Glover - who's also in the movie), has certainly proved his eccentric mettle in the past. By the time we reach the final scene, which is clearly supposed to exude glorious rapture between offbeat lovers Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern, it has all the warming effect of cold ash.Īs those lovers, in this explosive, hipster spin on 'Bonnie and Clyde,' Cage and Dern are right on the money. The movie's initial intensity is so great, it consumes itself. This is hellfire unrestrained, incendiary poetry, playfully, wittily and menacingly done - for the first half.īut then, as if Lynch packed the firewood too loosely, or threw all his logs into the fire, things flare up then die down.

Matches, burned homes, more matches, a man burning to death, a car falling from a cliff before bursting into flames. If 'Peaks' hinted at menace and a world gone wrong, 'Wild' rubs your face in it, rushes along the freedom fuse of cinema, flaring at every turn.

David Lynch's 'Wild at Heart' is 'Twin Peaks' without the FCC on its back.

Laura dern wild at heart drum scene