WILD AT HEART

Demented good fun from a time when Nicholas Cage was one of the best actors on the planet and David Lynch was the best director working in America, "Wild at Heart" is a bombed-out, blitzed-out masterpiece that takes pulp fiction to an altogether higher plain. There really isn't anything to compare it with and it's still Lynch's most enjoyable film. This tale of Sailor and Lulu's odyssey across America's South is like "Badlands" on acid, a Wizard of Oz for dirty-minded grown-ups fit to bursting with Lynchian surrealism. What we have here are a couple of babes in the wood running for their lives complete with their very own Wicked Witch of the West in hot pursuit. Sailor, (Cage), has broken his parole, (he beat a man to death in self-defence), and he's taken to one of Lynch's lost highways with his girlfriend Lulu. On their trail is Lulu's mad momma, (a gloriously uncontrolled Diane Ladd), and her henchmen Harry Dean Stanton and J E Freeman. She wants Sailor dead because he knows too much about her nefarious past and prefers her daughter to her. It's a typically hard-boiled noirish plot shot through with one hell of a dose of adrenalin. Both Cage and Laura Dern, (Lulu), are terrific and the supporting cast are close to perfection, (others involved include Willem Dafoe and Isabella Rossellini). This is a classic ripe for re-discovery.