Wild at Heart
Lovers Lula (Dern) and Sailor (Cage) are separated after he is jailed for killing – in self-defense – a man who attacked him with a knife who was hired by Lula's mother, Marietta Fortune (Ladd). Upon Sailor's release, Lula picks him up at the prison where she hands him his snakeskin jacket and he happily accepts. They go to a hotel where she reserved a room, make love and go to see the heavy metal band Powermad. While they are dancing at the club, an anonymous slam dancer bumps into Lula and begins to dance and grind into her. Sailor gets the band to stop and tells the man to apologize. The man tells him that he looks "like a clown in that stupid jacket". They fight and Sailor wins. He tells the man to apologize. Sailor gets the band to immediately launch into "Love Me" by Elvis as he sings lead vocal. Later, back in the room, after making love again, Sailor and Lula finally decide to run away to California, breaking Sailor's parole. Lula's mother arranges for a private detective, Johnnie Farragut (Harry Dean Stanton) to find them and bring them back. He agrees because he is in love with her. Unbeknown to Johnnie, however, Marietta also hires gangster Marcelles Santos (J.E. Freeman) to track them, and eliminate Sailor.
Unaware of all of the events happening back in North Carolina, the two are on their way until – according to Lula – they witness a bad omen: the aftermath of a two-car accident, and the only survivor, a young woman (Sherilyn Fenn), dies in front of them. With little money left, Sailor heads for Big Tuna, Texas, where he contacts "an old friend" who might be able to help them. Inevitably, while Sailor agrees to join up with Bobby Peru (Willem Dafoe) in a feed store robbery, Lula waits for him in the hotel room, being sick and pining for the better times. Bobby is let into the room by Lula while Sailor is out and tries to rape Lula, but at the last second laughs it off and walks out. The day of the robbery arrives. It goes spectacularly wrong when Peru unnecessarily shoots two clerks, and as they leave the feed store, Sailor realized he has been given an unloaded pistol. Bobby then admits to Sailor he's been hired to kill him, but just as he is about to do so he is shot by sheriff's deputies and as he falls he accidentally blows his own head off with the shotgun he was carrying. Sailor is arrested and given five years in jail.
While Sailor is in jail, Lula has his child, her mother "vanishes", and upon his release she decides to pick him up with their son. As they pick him up in the car, he reveals he's leaving them both, having decided while in prison that he isn't good enough for them. While he is walking a short distance away, he encounters a gang of mostly Asian men who surround him. He thinks his bravado will carry him through, but gets jumped, beaten and is knocked out. While he is unconscious, he sees a revelation in the form of Glinda the Good Witch (Sheryl Lee) who tells him, "Don't turn away from love, Sailor" (one of the film's many allusions to the The Wizard of Oz). When he awakes, he apologizes to the men and tells them he realizes a great many things, then screams her name and runs away. As there is a traffic jam on the road, he begins to run over the roofs and hoods of the cars to get back to Lula and their child in the car, with the film ending as Sailor sings "Love Me Tender" to Lula on the hood of their car as the credits roll.
