Starring: Christian Slater, Marisa Tomei, Rosie Perez, Kyle Secor
Director: Tony Bill
Producers: Tony Bill and Helen Buck Bartlett
Screenplay: Tom Sierchio
Music: Cliff Eidelman
Released by MGM
Caroline (Marisa Tomei) is a waitress at a diner who lives with her parents and constantly gets dumped by her boyfriends. Adam (Christian Slater) is a loner who works as a busboy at the same place. As a child, he was an orphan with a bad heart, a condition which hasn't improved with time. The two are brought together when Adam saves Caroline from a pair of rapists. Together, they form a bond and must fight for their love against overwhelming pressure from almost every direction.
Get out the Kleenexes and violins. There's not a method of audience manipulation missed by this shameless, brainless tearjerker of a movie. The bad melodrama of daytime soap operas is more intelligent. It wouldn't be so distressing if the manipulation was skillful, but Untamed Heart is saddled with heavy-handed direction and a script that should have been thrown into the garbage. The dialogue is embarrassing too. The people in this movie say some of the dumbest things. Screenwriters should think about lines before they commit them to paper.
The casting is curious. Christian Slater may be one of the more versatile actors in his age bracket, but he is horribly miscast here. For whatever reason, he never gets a handle on Adam. Most of the time, his performance is rigid -- there are moments when it seems that rigor mortis has set in. On those rare occasions when he relaxes and does a little bit of acting, it becomes jarringly apparent how poor he is in the rest of the movie. For someone who has made his reputation playing cocky, somewhat obnoxious characters, a role requiring subtlety is beyond his grasp.
Evaluating Marisa Tomei's performance is more difficult. Her abundance of energy and spunk shines through even in this dreary little film. She possesses an ability to use facial expressions to convey emotions - a pout, a smile, a widening of the eyes. Despite those physical tools, however, her performance isn't especially memorable. The reason is simple: she can't speak the dialogue in a serious or believable manner. Admittedly, most of her lines are trite or silly, but that's no excuse. Her whiny voice is only occasionally capable of saying things that sound heartfelt.
Then there's the issue of chemistry. In romances, this is a critical element, and it's completely absent here. Of course, it doesn't help that both of the main characters are flat, but the actors don't connect, either. This is another example of where better casting might have produced a more enjoyable film, although the performances of Slater and Tomei are clearly not the fundamental problem with Untamed Heart.
At the outset, I thought this film was going to be a Frankie and Johnny for a younger crowd. While the Pacino/Pfeiffer outing is flawed, the basic themes could be effectively reworked. The result, however, would definitely not be Untamed Heart. Unless you're a fan of Slater or Tomei, or hopelessly addicted to sappy, ineptly-handled love stories, there's no reason whatsoever to subject yourself to this movie.
© 1993 James Berardinelli