Title: Wild at Heart
Starring: Nicolas Cage, Laura Dern, Willem Dafoe
Director: David Lynch
Certificate: 18
Released: 25/10/2010
Writer/Director David Lynch takes Barry Gifford's novel and turns everything up to the max. Sailor (Nicolas Cage) and Lula (Laura Dern) are two young lovers seemingly fated to be ripped apart by Lula's mother (Diane Ladd), who hates Sailor. Desperate to escape, Sailor and Lula go on the roadtrip to end all roadtrips. Sex, rock and roll, hitmen, crazy war veterans (Willem Dafoe), bank robberies, a shock pregnancy and a scene where one character blows his own head of with a shotgun.
This is true Lynch – out of this world weirdness with a dark visual style and pitch-black humour. Everything the characters say is delivered in a totally luscious over-the-top way, both in terms of dialogue and deliverance. Wild at Heart is a slice of ultra-violent, super-sleazily weirdly-sexy cinema. Cage is the crazy Elvis fan. Dern is his white trash girlfriend while Willem Dafoe just crackles and burns the screen. It’s beautiful in the sense that it’s brutal and violent and profane. It makes no sense at all for the most part, but then when did Lynch ever make sense? Just watch it for the pure pleasure of watching a film so over-the-top that you’re never likely to see the likes again. Nicolas Cage, Willem Dafoe and Laura Dern wearing a snakeskin jacket (Cage), wearing next to nothing at all (Dern) or wearing a mouthful of rotten teeth (Dafoe) do some of their best ever work.
The only downside here is that the Blu-ray release doesn’t outstrip the DVD release in terms of image quality. It’s a minor upgrade over the previous version but is it enough to warrant an upgrade? Maybe this is one for true little blue blu-ray boxes only, the rest will not miss out on much if they retain their DVD copies and a few quid in their pockets.
