Wild At Heart (1990)
Average Rating: 5.9/10
Reviews Counted: 43
Fresh: 28 | Rotten: 15
No consensus yet.
Average Rating: 5.3/10
Critic Reviews: 9
Fresh: 4 | Rotten: 5
No consensus yet.
liked it
Average Rating: 3.7/5
User Ratings: 41,925
My Rating
Movie Info
Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern play a pair of lovers on the run in David Lynch's surrealist road movie Wild at Heart. Cage's Sailor Ripley is a violent ex-convict with an Elvis Presley fixation who falls in love with Dern's Lula Pace Fortune, the daughter of a rich, but mentally unstable, Southern belle named Marietta (Diane Ladd, Dern's real-life mother). Just after Sailor is released from prison, where he was jailed for brutally killing one of Marietta's thugs, he and Lula take off on a wild
Aug 17, 1990 Wide
Dec 7, 2004
Media Home Entertainment
Cast
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Nicolas Cage
Sailor Ripley -
Laura Dern
Lula Pace Fortune -
Diane Ladd
Marietta Fortune -
Willem Dafoe
Bobby Peru -
Isabella Rossellini
Perdita Durango -
Harry Dean Stanton
Johnnie Farragut -
Crispin Glover
Dell -
Grace Zabriskie
Juana -
J.E. Freeman
Marcello Santos -
Calvin Lockhart
Reggie -
David Patrick Kelly
Dropshadow -
-
-
-
Freddie Jones
George Kovich -
Charlie Spradling
Irma -
-
Marvin Kaplan
Uncle Pooch -
Brent David Fraser
Idiot Punk -
John Lurie
Sparky -
Jack Nance
00 Spool -
Tommy G. Kendrick
Red (uncredited/cut out... -
Scott Coffey
Billy -
Frances Bay
Madam -
Peter Bromilow
Hotel Manager -
Frank Collison
Timmy Thompson -
Sherilyn Fenn
Girl in Accident -
Cage S. Johnson
Man at Shell Station -
Sheryl Lee
Good Witch -
Nicholas Love
Man in Wheelchair -
Albert Popwell
Barkeeper at Zanzibar (... -
Koko Taylor
Singer at Zanzibar -
Bob Terhune
Earl Kovich (uncredited... -
Pruitt Taylor Vince
Buddy -
Tracey Walter
Roach (uncredited/cut o... -
Darrell Zwerling
Singer's Manager -
Jack Jozefson
Chet (uncredited/cut ou... -
Ed Wright
Desk Clerk -
Daniel Quinn
Young Cowboy -
Shawne Rowe
Waitress (uncredited/cu... -
William Morgan Sheppard
Mr. Reindeer
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All Critics (44) | Top Critics (10) | Fresh (33) | Rotten (15) | DVD (27)
Even the title is a letdown, somehow.
Top CriticJoltingly violent, wickedly funny and rivetingly erotic.
Barry Gifford's beautifully written picaresque novel about southern lovers on the run, though essentially literary, could have worked as a movie had David Lynch shown some fidelity to the realistic context.
Funny, scary and brilliantly cinematic.
Though Miss Dern and Mr. Cage are constantly upstaged by the rest of the movie, they triumph.
Lynch's kinky fairy tale is a triumph of startling images and comic invention.
Should be perceived as a wicked comedy.
The result's mostly empty at heart and hollow on top.
This winner of the Cannes Film Festival's Palme d'Or is a lunatic road movie seething with the same dark intensity that animates director Lynch's earlier work.
It's not a pleasant film by any definition, and it's not remotely for everyone, but it's true to Lynch's vision.
Lynch's paean to Wizard of Oz divided critics when it premeiered at Cannes, and it never found an audience beyond the helmer's fans who enjoyed the fable's couple (Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern) taking their own Yellow Brick Road in search of the wizard
Not for the weak of heart, one of the best Lynchian outings with some fantastically memorable dialogue.
Wild at Heart feels belabored, and it lacks the resonance and power with which the best, most unfiltered passages of Lynch's work vibrate.
David Lynch does it again.....a hot, heavy, hellish movie
Audience Reviews for Wild At Heart
Super Reviewer
This is just two hours long road movie with pointless side plots, characters that are only odd for the sake of being odd and graphic images that for me just felt unnecessary. Wild At Heart has some curious elements in it and it has echoes of that typically brooding atmosphere which so many other Lynch films also does. Sad fact is that there is no interesting characters here or anybody or anything to care about.
And talk about annoying. Diane Ladd is beyond hysterical as a sadistic mother here and every scene she is in just becomes frustrating to watch. Laura Dern and Harry Dean Stanton give us film's better performances, but even their perfromances are nothing more than ok.
There are heavy references of Wizard of Oz here and Lynch is leaning towards fantasy and more comical approach. Nothing still takes away the fact that Wild At Heart is all over the place. It is a fragmented and unpleasantly violent experience which ends up being more boring to watch than curiosity.
In Lynch's filmography this certainly is one of his weakest or possibly even the most weakest work to date.
Super Reviewer
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- Bobby Peru: It`s full of dummies, dummy!
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- Sailor Ripley: I guess I started smokin' when I was about four. My Mama was already dead by then from lung cancer.
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- Lula Pace Fortune: One of these mornins the sun's gonna come up and burn a hole through the planet like an electrical exray.
- Sailor Ripley: That ain't never gonna happen, honey. At least, not in our lifetime. By then they'll be drivin' Buicks to the moon.
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- Sailor Ripley: Did I ever tell ya that this here jacket represents a symbol of my individuality, and my belief in personal freedom?
- Lula Pace Fortune: About fifty thousand times.
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- Lula Pace Fortune: This whole world is wild at heart and weird on top.
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Foreign Titles
- Sailor et Lula (FR)
- Corazón salvaje (ES)
