Wild At Heart

Actress Diane Ladd died earlier this week at the age of 89. I just happened to have Wild At Heart on my DVR from when TCM showed it as part of their programming tribute to director David Lynch, so I decided I'd watch it as soon as possible to put up a review here. (Now watch it get added to the December night of movies for people who died in 2025.)

Nicolas Cage stars as Sailor, who at the start of the movie is at a hotel ballroom in Cape Fear, NC, together with girlfriend Lula (Laura Dern). As he's walking down the stairs, he's stopped by another man who says he saw Sailor and Lula doing the nasty in the bathroom, which is a big no-no because Lula's mom Marietta (Diane Ladd) doesn't like Sailor. This other man then concludes by pulling out a knife with which he clearly intends to stab poor Sailor to death. Sailor is able to get the knife out of the other man's hand and then proceeds to beat this other man quite violently, eventually bashing the guy's head in well past the point of death.

So, obviously, this is at the very least manslaughter: while Sailor had reason to fear for his life, beating the other guy all the way to death wasn't quite called for. Sailor spends just shy of two years in prison, and when he tries to call Lula, it's her mom who answers, and who is absolutely pissed about Sailor's trying to contact Lula. Lula, for her part, loves Sailor, so she shows up at the prison on the day Sailor gets released on parole. There's a catch of course, which is that Sailor is supposed to stay in the area or else it's a parole violation. But that would mean staying near Marietta. Sailor decides, screw it, he's going to violate parole by going all the way off to California, and would Lula be willing to join him? She does, and they set out on the road.

Marietta is again unhappy about this, and gets in touch with her boyfriend Johnnie (Harry Dean Stanton). Johnnie's job is to find Lula and Sailor, and get them back to North Carolina. But at the same time, Marietta has another boyfriend, Santos (J.E. Freeman). Marietta gets in touch with him, too, and gives him a contract to kill Sailor. Santos being much more violent, also gets in touch with contract killers to have Johnnie killed to, presumably so that only Santos can get the money for dealing with Sailor. Sailor is bright enough to know that he's probably not quite safe on the run, and not just safe from the legitimate authorities.

As Sailor and Lula make their way down first to New Orleans, and then to middele-of-nowhere Texas, we learn more about Lula's past. She was raped at 13 by her father's business partner, while Dad responded by setting himself on fire and killing himself. Except that we learn later that perhaps this wasn't a suicide but Mom and Santos killing Dad, with Sailor having witnessed what happened, which would certainly explain why Lula's mom has it in for Sailor.

Stuck in Texas, the couple stays at a hotel full of weirdos, including Bobby Peru (Willem Dafoe). Sailor needs money in order to be able to support Lula as a wife, especially because she's pretty darn certain she's pregnant with Sailor's child. Bobby gets Sailor involved in a scheme to rob an agricultural feed store, but that robbery goes wrong, leading to the movie's denouement....

Wild At Heart got mixed reviews on release, and it's easy to see why. It's decidedly violent, although I don't necessarily have a problem with the violence. However, as with the other of Lynch's films that I've seen, it's also highly stylized, and that Lynch style isn't something that's a favorite of mine. I didn't care for it at all with Eraserhead; with Blue Velvet I didn't dislike the movie although the mannered execution of it is disconcerting at time. In Wild at Heart, everybody's weird for no good reason, to the point of being highly artificial. Some people are going to love this, but for me it's also easy to see how some people are absolutely going to hate it.

Of course, if you're already a fan of David Lynch, you've probably seen Wild At Heart, so none of this is going to be new to you. Sit back, watch it (again), and enjoy.