This here's a snakeskin jacket... (Wild At Heart (DVD))

Member Name: moronboy

Product:	Wild At Heart (DVD)
Date:	31/07/00 (79 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great fun

Disadvantages: Soft-centred

Probably David Lynch's most accessible film, for all the grotesque violence (Willem Dafoe's head blown clean off, Cage splattering a guy in an early flashback), a rather trivial and soft-centred riff on the road movie, 'The Wizard of Oz' and Elvis Presley, with superb performances, some outstanding jokes, and the usual Lynch mix of naked ladies and weird imagery.

Sailor Ripley (Nic Cage) gets out of prison intent on hooking up with Lula, his lover (Laura Dern), but her psychotic mother (Diane Ladd) and assorted gangsters and hitmen (Willem Dafoe, J.E. Freeman, a hairy Isabella Rossellini) are intent on splitting the couple and, if at all possible, killing Sailor dead.

There are the bones of a gangster plot, with Lula's Mom and Marcellus Santos (Freeman) having done something bad to Lula's mother, and Sailor knowing something about it, but Lynch doesn't really care much about that, and concentrates instead on the pair's encounters in New Orleans and on the road. There are some delrious scenes, and the usual assortment of lunatics whom Lynch has seemingly tempted off the streets and into his movie. It doesn't have the overwhelming sense of the dark and unhealthy that dominates 'Blue Velvet', and though it fails to make any sense, it isn't the incoherent, genuinely disturbing nightmare of 'Lost Highway'. It seems almost toned down from the best of Lynch, but it's still an enthralling ride. Dern is great, Cage hilarious, simply playing Elvis in his 'Blue Hawaii' phase, and the rest of the cast are plugged into the house of menace and lunacy.

Not as bonkers as it should be, but it'll certainly do.

Summary: