Review: Wild Hearts Can’t be Broken

By Alice Gray – Staff Writer

Released in 1991, Wild Hearts Can't be Broken is a movie every little girl should see, and one that mom and dad will enjoy too. The backdrop for our protagonist, teenager Sonora Webster, is the Great Depression- as if she needs any more obstacles to overcome! With both her parents dead and her Aunt due to send her to an orphanage the next day, Sonora sneaks off in the night with a rucksack on her shoulder and a newspaper clipping in her pocket: "Young Girl Needed to Ride Diving Horses."

At a traveling circus she sees exactly what it is a "diving girl" does: ride atop a horse that jumps off of a forty-foot platform into a pool of water. Her heart races as she watches wide-eyed, and so does ours.

What follows for Sonora is a series of defiant acts that lead down a path she may never have asked for but one which she will not cower from. We love Sonora because she is everything we are afraid to be.  She takes risks and shoots high and when she's told she can't do something, she either does it anyway, or refuses to budge until she's given a chance. She is embarrassingly stubborn, something that will both ruin and save her.

Through the diving show Sonora meets the people who will eventually become her family, and each time that it seems she has "made it," tragedy strikes.  But amidst poverty, death and disability, she never gives up, even when everyone is begging her to. This film will inspire your daughters and will stay with them for a long time to come.