Movie review: 'Blue Velvet' a classic

By Colin Covert, Star Tribune

Last update: February 8, 2007 - 3:42 PM

Rated R for violence, language, drug use, sex and nudity.

Where: Oak Street Cinema

There's not a single false note in David Lynch's notorious masterpiece, "Blue Velvet," an unnerving meditation on innocence and depravity. The film opens in a universe of apple-pie Americana, flirts with a teen romance between dewy-fresh Kyle McLaughlin and Laura Dern, then swan-dives into a surrealistic film noir plotline involving psychotic hoodlums and sexual slavery.

Brutalizing horror and subtle insights into the basest aspects of human behavior are seamlessly incorporated in Lynch's riveting twist on coming-of-age stories. And the darkness is not disturbed by the smoothly incorporated irreverent humor. Dennis Hopper contributes an unbearably intense performance as the small town's vicious, drug-addled crime boss. As the Dark Woman who comes between McLaughlin and the virginal Dern, Isabella Rossellini is both pitiably wounded and threateningly unstable. Like the man says, "It's a strange world."