Wild At Heart

As a filmmaker, director David Lynch’s signature eccentricities are most effective when channeled into disciplined thriller plotting, as they were in Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive. But working in a genre without limits, he turns Wild At Heart into an overripe repository of gothic grotesques, superfluous flashbacks and vignettes, and references to Elvis and The Wizard Of Oz. Though Lynch unbound on America's back roads leads to several unfortunate detours, it also opens up possibilities that are thrillingly unpredictable and alive with moon-eyed romanticism, courtesy of charismatic stars Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern.  

Updated 10/12/2010