Untamed Heart

Tony Bill's Minneapolis melodrama begins with washed-out, anaemic shots of an orphanage and a fey bedtime story passed from a nun to a young invalid about a boy with a baboon heart. It's a shock how suddenly the film is back on course after such a sickly sentimental prologue, kick started by a happening actress firing on all cylinders. Tomei's after-hours waitress, Caroline, is vulnerable, funny and wholly unaffected. Her banter with friend Rosie Perez is like verbal pinball. Slater's busboy Adam is an angelic wild child, so shyly distant his work mates assume he'd retarded. When he saves Caroline from two rapists, she becomes curious...and falls in love. Slater's greasy-haired 'Beast' is not for the hard-boiled, but see the film for Tomei's sensitive, doe-eyed 'Beauty', and for Bill's sure feel for an authentic downtown milieu.