Directed by Tony Bill
Written by Tom Sierchio
Starring Marisa Tomei, Christian Slater, Rosie Perez
Release Date February 12th, 1993
Published February 12th, 2023
So... let's see if I understand this correctly. We are going to work this out together, you and me, dear reader. Christian Slater is a grown adult who still believes that when he was a child living in the jungle that his father stole magical rubies from a Baboon King to try and save Slater's characters life. When the Baboon King, who was trying to murder Slater's father, finds out that the rubies are for trying to save the child, the Baboon King tears out his own heart and puts it into the child Christian Slater's chest. He believes this story still, as an adult working at diner, that he tells this to the women he's been stalking/falling in love with.
That's something that a human being wrote down and then made into a movie. Untamed Heart is a wild damn disaster of a romantic drama. It's a bizarre movie that appears to think it's perfectly normal for a grown man to rarely speak and believe that he has a baboon heart so thoroughly that he doesn't want to get a heart transplant that might prolong his life. And he's the romantic lead in this movie. No, he's not the little brother who suffered a head injury as a child that the actual romantic lead in the movie takes care of because their parents are gone, he's the actual lead in the movie.
Okay, yeah, that's completely insane. Marisa Tomei is the actual star of Untamed Heart as a diner waitress named Caroline. While walking home late one night, Caroline is accosted by a pair of mashers, played by Kyle Secor and Willie Garson. Secor attempts to sexually assault Caroline but is thwarted by Adam (Christian Slater). He scoops up an unconscious Caroline and takes her home where he places her on a porch swing and spends hours watching her sleep. Yeah!
By this point, it's been established that though Caroline and Adam have worked together for some time, he doesn't speak to her or really anyone if he doesn't absolutely have to. So, if they don't know each other, how does Adam know where she lives? Well, he's been stalking Caroline for weeks, perhaps months at a time. He says he just follows her home to make sure she gets there safe but later we will learn that he was also breaking into her house and watching her sleep.
For her part, Caroline finds all of this incredibly romantic. The 90s were a goddamned mess. If you don't believe that women have spent most of their lives being gaslighted into thinking insane things are actually romantic, you haven't seen this nutzo movie that posits a stranger breaking into a woman's home to watch her sleep for weeks or months on end, as romantic devotion worthy of them spending the rest of their lives together.
The scene were we find out that Adam has been following Grace comes when he breaks into her house and puts up a Christmas tree in her room, fully decorated. He did this while she and her entire family were sleeping. Her reaction to this is somehow not complete horror. Instead, she responds by saying thank you and 'I can't believe you remembered.' Remembered what? Christmas? Honestly, I wonder if they had Marisa Tomei's character act dumber just so she might seem like she would buy into Slater's Adam as a legit romantic partner.
