Product Details

• Actors: Nicolas Cage, Laura Dern, Willem Dafoe, J.E. Freeman, Crispin Glover
• Directors: David Lynch
• Writers: David Lynch, Barry Gifford
• Producers: Michael Kuhn, Monty Montgomery, Sigurjon Sighvatsson, Steve Golin
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC
• Language: English
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Media Home Video
• VHS Release Date: April 4, 1991
• Run Time: 124 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (119 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6303018351
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #6,425 in Video (See Bestsellers in Video)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com
David Lynch's 1990 Wild at Heart is an utterly random and ugly experience with pockets of startling imagery and inspired set pieces. Based on a Barry Gifford novel, the film stars Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern as lovers on the lam whose relationship is tested and who meet some truly dangerous wackos (including an almost-simian Willem Dafoe). Lynch's thoughts seem to be everywhere, and he expects the audience to keep up with a story that seems more a collection of avant-garde whims than a coherent vision with the intuitive brilliance of his Blue Velvet. Cage gives one of his more chaotic performances, but then he was just reading Lynch's signposts. --Tom Keogh

From The New Yorker
Right from the start, just about everything is wrong with this David Lynch movie, and the wrongness has an escalating, vertiginous quality. Every false move seems to lead to another, more disastrous than the one before. It's a buzzing, hyperkinetic picture, but its wildness is all on the surface: the images are elaborately conceived, arrresting, and meaningless, like tattoos. The novel by Barry Gifford on which Lynch based his screenplay is a languorous, arty trifle about a pair of lovers named Sailor (Nicolas Cage) and Lula (Laura Dern), who drive from North Carolina to Texas and stop at ratty hotels and motels along the way; they're hard-lovin' losers who smoke a lot and don't get to the place they set out for (California). Their happiness is threatened by a variety of kinky villains, mostly of Lynch's invention: Gifford's poky Deep South odyssey is now an orgy of evil, full of graphic violence and grotesque craziness. The shocks don't have much resonance, though; the weirdness here is inexpressive and trivial, even silly. And the lurid villainy always seems diversionary, a baroque disguise for a bland, lifeless, and overfamiliar story. The movie is one startling lapse of taste after another; it's a sorry spectacle. Also with Diane Ladd, Willem Dafoe, Harry Dean Stanton, Isabella Rossellini, Grace Zabriskie, J. E. Freeman, W. Morgan Sheppard, Calvin Lockhart, David Patrick Kelly, and Crispin Glover. -Terrence Rafferty
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Direct, disturbing access to the mind of David Lynch., November 20, 1998

By	William A. Otis (Indiana, USA) - See all my reviews

Wild at Heart is less a movie and more a psychological journey. It's hard for me to judge it the way I judge other movies; it simply can't be put under the same standards. Most movies are about entertainment and telling a story; this movie (like Blue Velvet before it) is about intense emotions, the darker side of the soul, and the warped mind of director David Lynch. David Lynch is one of the few directors left who still expresses himself through his work; he is one of the last true film artists. He indulges himself here, perhaps to an extreme. I'm not even sure I can say that this movie "entertained" me in the usual sense; but I relished the experience. His obsessions with Elvis, (impersonated or channeled by Nicholas Cage in an inspired performance) The Wizard of Oz, (the movie repeatedly references the classic both concretely and in symbolism) his desire to opress/victimize women, and the evil inside us all take center stage here; the story becomes secondary. The story itself is about a couple whose love borders on an unhealthy obsession, and seems to be founded in pleasure more than spirit. It is a "road picture" if you boil it down superficially. But this movie is about Lynch's twisted desires and his desire to twist us as well. The scene where Willem Dafoe's evil, animalistic character seduces Laura Dern verbally is one of the most powerful scenes in film. In my mind the release of this movie and the premiere of "Twin Peaks" on television were the events that started the 90's, at least in an artistic sense. Watch this movie; it is an intense roller coaster, a visual dream, and an unfiltered look into Lynch's mind and the American psyche.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best role of Nicolas Cage, June 18, 2000

By A Customer

It seems to me that this is the best role Nicolas Cage ever played. His character is funny, over the top. It would be a shame if MGM would not release this movie on DVD. The whole movie it`s a comedy, even in its violent parts. Without a doubt the best film Lynch ever directed, after "Blue Velvet".

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wild At Heart On DVD will be great, June 7, 2000

By A Customer

Yes, the other guy was right. This movie should be released on DVD. But my question is how? How everybody who loves the movie can express themselves clearly on this point? I don`t know but I do love this movie, the acting is great. It won "Golden Palm" at Cannes Film Festival ten years ago.