Marietta Fortune (Diane Ladd) sets a man off to kill her daughter Lula (Laura Dern)'s boyfriend Sailor Ripley (Nicolas Cage). Sailor manages to kill the man but he gets imprisoned for almost two years. Lula is there waiting for him when he gets released. They leave Cape Fear and his probation for New Orleans. Marietta sends Johnnie Farragut (Harry Dean Stanton) after them. She also hires gangster Marcello Santos. The couple finds Perdita Durango (Isabella Rossellini) and joins Bobby Peru (Willem Dafoe) in a robbery as they continue their road trip.

This is one crazy film. I give full marks to director David Lynch for his audacity and his style. The acting is big and deliberately broad. There are fanciful allusions to Wizard of Oz and other imagery. This is an unique Lynch vision. The craziness in the characters and story simply overwhelm me at some point. I couldn't take the insanity.

Wild at Heart is not David Lynch at his best, personally much prefer Blue Velvet, The Elephant Man, Mulholland Drive and The Straight Story and is definitely not going to be everybody's cup of tea. But while it has its flaws Wild at Heart still impresses and fascinates in many ways, also don't think that it's his worst like some people I know in the past have said(that'd be Dune). The story does feel very randomly structured at times, especially true with Crispin Glover, and some of the pacing slackens; the film could have done with being shorter as some scenes did feel too padded and underdeveloped, and the script can be a confused jumble and not always easy to understand completely(though admittedly there are some quotable lines). There are many great things with Wild at Heart however because the cinematography is stunning, the scenery is bursting with vivid colour and there are plenty of bold colours and lighting with some of the visuals being wonderfully deranged. There is also a hypnotic soundtrack that adds so much to the feel of the film, the music choices being also quite interesting, while Lynch's direction while not the best he's ever done(tied between Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive) but it is very adept and has his unique style all over. The story is not the best but the atmosphere is just great, just loved the campiness, the eroticism and haunting weirdness, it's hardly uneventful and there are some memorable moments like the incredibly chilling robbery sequence and the ending. The Wizard of Oz references while a little over-used are fun. The characters are not likable at all, in fact in the cases of Marietta and Bobby a few of them could be seen as loathsome, but considering the atmosphere and viciously violent but also sexy content of the film it is clear that they weren't intended to be. The performances are fine, Nicholas Cage will induce polarising opinions but while he was wooden to start with he was charming and entertaining once he warmed up. Laura Dern is alluring with the two working comfortably together, while Diana Ladd manages to be both hilarious and scary and Willem Dafoe is unforgettably creepy. The cameos acquit themselves well too. All in all, incredibly strange and not without flaws but also fascinating. 7/10 Bethany Cox

A bit of a weird one, this, but then what was I expecting from a David Lynch film? It's a surreal road movie starring Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern as a pair of star-crossed lovers on the run from Dern's demented mother and the string of assorted weirdos on their tail.

I can't say I enjoyed this film all that much. I don't mind slightly crazed or surreal movies, like an earlier Nicolas Cage flick (and out-and-out comedy),RAISING ARIZONA. But WILD AT THE HEART feels like it's trying to be deliberately bad. Cage isn't in touch with reality at all in this one and Laura Dern just comes across as a bad actress.

The direction is over the top throughout, with no measure of restraint on view. Lots of scenes are cheesy or just plain bad. It's not all bad, though, because we do get Willem Dafoe in an scene-stealing supporting role, and some decent set-pieces (like the bank job) along the way. But a lot of it, especially during the first hour, feels repetitive and slow, and the WIZARD OF OZ allusions are annoying more than anything.