Untamed Heart (1993)

"Solid production and good performances...  Leonard Maltin's Movie & Video Guide
"A touching meditation upon the spiritual concept of soul mates.  Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, Spirituality and Practice
"...when Slater and Tomei are alone together, their exchanges are so shyly affectionate, so sweet, that they soften the hardest hearts.  Hal Hinson, The Washington Post
"...touching in the simplicity of its age-old story, and heart-warming in the way it knows and loves its characters...  James Kendrick, Q Network Film Desk
"...Tomei, Slater, and especially Rosie Perez are magnificent.  Nell Minow, Movie Mom
"...[a] moonbeam of a love story.  Rolling Stone

Editor's Note A tender tale about the romance between Adam, a severely introverted busboy with a congenital heart problem and Caroline, a waitress with a penchant for men who reject her. Walking home late one night from the Minneapolis diner where she and Adam work, Caroline is attacked by two thugs. Just as they are about to rape her, Adam miraculously appears and beats the living daylights out of the two guys. To her surprise, Caroline discovers that the shy, silent Adam has been infatuated with her from afar and has even followed her home every night to make sure nothing happens to her along the way. Won over by his sweetness and devotion, Caroline enters into a tentative relationship with Adam, gently guiding him through his first experience with physical and emotional intimacy.

	Christian Slater
	Claudia Wilkens
	Kyle Secor
	Marisa Tomei
	Rosie Perez
	Vincent Kartheiser
	Tony Bill - Director
	Jost Vacano - Director of Photography
	Cliff Eidelman - Musical Score
	Helen Buck Bartlett - Producer
	Tony Bill - Producer
	Tom Sierchio - Writer

A waitress with a heart of gold seems destined to keep falling for the wrong guy until the night a reclusive busboy saves her life. His heroic act results in the exposure of his rare heart condition -- and his love for her inside his heart. Rolling Stone
"...Sweet and sexy....It's Tomei and Perez who give UNTAMED HEART its buoyant wit..." 03/04/1993 p.72-74

USA Today
"...Marisa Tomei is as unforgettable in UNTAMED HEART as she was as Joe Pesci's no-nonsense girlfriend in MY COUSIN VINNY..." 02/12/1993 p.8D

Variety
"...Appealing lead performances....Tomei establishes her dramatic credentials here, projecting a very believable girl-next-door quality..." 02/01/1993

Entertainment Weekly
"...With her flashing dark eyes and libidinous overbite, Tomei is adorable....She gazes at Slater with such ardor and delight that he's transformed, and so is the audience..." 02/26/1993 p.40

Chicago Sun-Times
"...The movie is sweet and kind of goofy, and works because its heart is in the right place....[Tomei] is winning and warm..." 02/12/1993 p.36

Chicago Sun-Times 8 of 10
"The Untamed Heart" is an unabashed romance, wrapped up in a working-class story about a waitress and a dishwasher and their worlds. It's a fairytale with dishwater hands, starring Marisa Tomei as a waitress on the all-night shift at a Minneapolis diner, and Christian Slater as the silent, mysterious kid in the kitchen who never seems to have anything to say...The movie is kind of sweet and kind of goofy, and works because its heart is in the right place. Tomei, who has appeared in a lot of movies lately ("My Cousin Vinny," "Chaplin") is winning and warm, and Slater, who doesn't have much to say, projects the right note of mystery and doomed romance...There are a lot of salt-of-the-earth supporting characters, of whom my favorite is Rosie Perez, as Tomei's fellow waitress and best friend. Perez essentially plays the same character she did so well in "White Men Can't Jump," and because I liked her there, I liked her here, although she has less to do...She smokes a lot, but then so does Tomei and almost everyone else in sight. Maybe that's because this story should somehow really be about people in their 40s, and so the young actors think they'll look older if they smoke. Or maybe smoking is now seen as a sign of working-class status...The issue of age was lurking right under the surface for me all through this film. Somehow the actors, in their early 20s, seemed to have found themselves into a Saroyan story about middle-aged losers having one last fling at idealism. Did it ever occur to the filmmakers to cast the film older? Or is the box office youth cult so well-established that older roles are transposed into younger ones? I liked Tomei and Slater here; I'll bet they'd be dynamite in these roles in 20 years. - Roger Ebert

Washington Post 6 of 10
The romantic fable Untamed Heart is hopelessly syrupy, preposterous and more than a little bit lame, but, still, somehow it got to me... when Slater and Tomei are alone together, their exchanges are so shyly affectionate, so sweet, that they soften the hardest hearts. - Hal Hinson

ReelViews 5 of 10
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...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...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. - James Berardinelli