Lost Highway Movie Review

Lost Highway takes its time getting started; nearly a third of the running time creeps by before anything remotely approaching a narrative thrust turns up. Fred and Renee Madison (Bill Pullman and Patricia Arquette) keep finding videotapes on their doorstep. Then, blink-and-you'll-miss-it, Fred is in a death row jail cell, awaiting his execution via the electric chair for Renee's murder. (There IS no electric chair in California, where this story appears to be set, but so what?) Somehow, Fred changes places with Pete Dayton (Balthazar Getty). Since Pete isn't Fred, he is sent home to Mom and Dad (Pete's dad is none other than Gary Busey). Pete continues going out with the girl down the block (Natasha Gregson Wagner) and working as a garage mechanic for his boss Arnie (Richard Pryor). One of the clients at the garage is Mr. Eddy (Robert Loggia), who has a bad-news/half-his-age girlfriend. (Surprise! Patricia Arquette IS Alice Wakefield, only now she resembles a washed-out version of the late blonde starlet Joyce Jameson.) Faster than you can say “Mr.-Eddy-will-kill-us-if-he-ever-finds-out,” Pete and Alice are looking for trouble and finding it. Among the other characters who pop up is a weird Mystery Man with an ominous aura (Robert Blake). And so this movie goes—on and on until it's over. Like Lynch's Twin Peaks series, Lost Highway is flecked with interesting touches amidst long stretches of total boredom. Yeah, this looks, sounds, and feels like a rough draft, but David Lynch fans won't mind.

1996 (R) 135m/C Bill Pullman, Patricia Arquette, Balthazar Getty, Robert Loggia, Robert (Bobby) Blake, Gary Busey, Jack Nance, Richard Pryor, Natasha Gregson Wagner, Lisa Boyle, Michael Massee, Jack Kehler, Henry Rollins, Gene Ross, Scott Coffey; D: David Lynch; W: David Lynch, Barry Gifford; C: Peter Deming; M: Angelo Badalamenti. VHS, LV, Closed Caption