CrawlerChunky
In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.
Arianna Moses
Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.
Kien Navarro
Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.
John Raymond Peterson
I normally expect good performances by Gary Oldman and Theresa Russell, who play the roles of Martin and Linda respectively. The storyline had me a little curious, so I watched it on a web-TV based channel. I must say that as the movie progressed, I had increasingly more difficulty keeping straight in my mind what was supposed to be real and what was supposed to be the product of the two key characters' schizophrenia. Both Oldman and Russell were experiencing hallucinations and the editing (intentionally I'm sure) did not make it easy to determine when we are seeing real moments or imagined ones; off course, some of these moments were clearly in the realm of fantasy. I concluded rather quickly that this was going to be a very confusing story. The characters of Oldman and Russell had serious psychological issues, which as best as I can tell were clouding heavily their judgement, and making them lose their grasp with reality. They are brilliant playing their mad characters and that was bout all I enjoyed about the film. Christopher Lloyd (Dr. Henry Henry-not a typo), among the sanest of the key players, in the role of Russell's husband, had entirely different psychological issues, one of which dealt with a sex fetish his nurse (played by Sandra Bernhard) was quick to assist him with. Dr. Henry's total disinterest with his wife Linda, one who had a healthy sexual appetite for a sultry and good looking wife, was enough to drive the teetering spouse into an unhealthy mental state (I'm no medical specialist but common sense is a pretty good foundation for such opinion). Oldman is the long lost son of Russell, so when the two of them go at it (enthusiastic fornicating) a few times, I immediately thought Freud's dissertation about what the troubled PhD. termed Oedipus complex, needed a new chapter and so would academic papers on incest. The only character in the movie that had her head straight, was played by Colleen Camp (the neighbor Arlanda); it's thanks to her I found the words for my review summary… Ball of Confusion. A word on T. Russell; if you want to see a terrific performance by her, watch 'Black Widow', a movie that was released a year before Track 29. I can't recommend this movie, I really can't
moonspinner55
The bored, lonely wife of a retirement-home physician in North Carolina dreams up an adult embodiment of the baby boy taken away from her when she was an unmarried teenager who got knocked-up at the county fair; her husband, a train enthusiast, has no patience with his wife's melancholia (he's cheating with his lascivious nurse), while the young man stands in not only as her now-grown child but also as a representative of her anger and isolation. Disconnected filmmaker Nicolas Roeg predictably provides no simple solutions for our heroine, and screenwriter Dennis Potter (who would seem to be the perfect movie-companion for Roeg) merrily keeps the inscrutable scenario on a schizophrenic track. This isn't the weirdest movie to come from either Roeg or Potter--the film, in fact, is one of Roeg's more accessible entries--but very few of the details or ideas come to fruition (such as the wife always being dressed in lavender, or her fetish for cartoons and dolls). Gary Oldman, just off "Sid and Nancy" where he played Sid Vicious, seems stuck in a revolving door of violent angst and aggression (only in a later scene, at the piano, does he show some charm), while Christopher Lloyd (as Henry Henry--sort of an update of Humbert Humbert) relies far too much on his rubbery facial expressions. In the lead, Theresa Russell works hard at conveying her character's inner-demons; in the vivid flashback scenes to her youth, she makes a terrific impression just by using her faraway eyes and smile. However, Russell never gets her little-girl twang quite right--her voice sounds disembodied--and her temper tantrums aren't shaped and have no comic pay-off (which is the fault of the director, who turns a blind eye). After the perverse-glossiness of something like 1986's "Blue Velvet", the scrubby ordinariness of "Track 29" is disappointing and dispiriting (it was shot by Alex Thomson, who has worked with Roeg before). Roeg, a brilliant cinematographer in his youth, only gets a kinetic vibe going in those flashbacks to the fairgrounds. Aside from those startling early shots and some stray funny moments, "Track 29" seems to lose its way awfully soon, and the apocalyptic final act is simply a mess. *1/2 from ****
ShootingShark
Linda is a bored housewife whose husband shows no interest in her. She wants a child and is haunted by the memory of the baby she was forced to give up from a teenage pregnancy. But when a strange young man named Martin suddenly appears, claiming to be her long lost son, is he who he seems to be, or is she starting to lose her mind ?I really like movies about the strangeness of the mother-son relationship (Psycho, The Manchurian Candidate) and this, from the pen of the brilliantly perverse Dennis Potter, is possibly the strangest. Its clever touch is in never explaining the Oldman character; he probably only exists in Russell's head, but equally he might be real, or he might be just a calculating psychopath (Potter used the same idea in Brimstone And Treacle, where the character is also called Martin). But as a metaphor for both Oedipal repression and the desire not to grow up (slyly mirrored in Lloyd's obsession with toy trains), he is endlessly fascinating and Oldman's histrionic performance is sensational. Russell too is amazing, in an impossible part, playing the whole movie with her eyebrows lowered quizzically, and the sexual tension between her and Oldman is incredible. Purists may claim their ages are wrong - he's too old and she's too young - but they are perfect casting, and Lloyd and Bernhard provide great wacky support, almost as if they are in a separate movie of their own. I love all the witty maternal references in this movie; it starts with John Lennon's song Mother (he was raised mostly by an aunt), the trucker's tattoos, at one point Oldman mashes a knife into an egg and at another he plays the old traditional song M-O-T-H-E-R on the piano, the clips from the erotically-charged Cape Fear on TV, etc. Beautifully shot by Alex Thomson throughout, with all sorts of clever visual tricks to keep us guessing at the characters' mental states. Produced by Rick McCallum (of Star Wars fame), funded by George Harrison's Handmade Films and shot at the DeLaurentiis Entertainment Group studios in North Carolina. This is a great primal scream of a movie, in equal parts bamboozling, funny and thought-provoking, with one-of-a-kind performances; a film for all mothers and sons to see, although probably best not together. This was the fourth of Roeg's six intriguing movies with his former wife Russell, and for my money their best one together (although they both made better films separately).
lost-in-limbo
In a small southern American town, housewife Linda Henry lives a unsatisfied life and wants a child to fulfil that gap, but her husband Henry seems more concerned about his model trains and receiving his fetish spanking from nurse Stein. One day in a diner, an odd and mysterious young English lad Martin approaches Linda and her friend. He seems to appear where she is, so when another confrontation eventuates. He admits to being her son, which he was taken from her at birth when she was a teenager, due to the reasoning of his conception. This newfound responsibility is bittersweet for Linda, but has it come at a price for her well-being. Bizarre, extremely bizarre… and sultry! Nicholas Roeg's "Track 29" is really hard to fathom, which can make it quite frustrating, due to the fact the pieces of this hysterically traumatic psychological puzzle never come to be one. Maybe that was on purpose, as the dysfunctional characters (usually lurking in small town settings) we follow seem rather disconnected, never quite sure of themselves and longing for something which could lead to an emotional breakdown. This exploration into the protagonists' wavering consciousness brings out many facets, like revelations of the past and those things that matter most for them to feel anything. The obsessive nature takes hold, where torment and frustration develops with neurotic results, which could finally lose out to fantasy, because reality and their situation is just to hard to come to grips with. Because of that, Dennis Potter's unbalanced, warped screenplay really does put you on the spot and throws around plenty of eye-boggling surreal passages. Symbolic clues feature thickly throughout and the themes that drown the moody, but complex script leave a strong imprint. While I don't think it's all-successful in conveying its ideas, it's still very interesting to watch. Building it up is the unusual kinky charge, perversely pitch-black humour and a terror-away performance by the nutty Gary Oldman. Boy, Oldman annoys with his infantile portrayal, but that peculiar intensity he generates and his edgy rapport with co-star Theresa Russell has you hypnotised. The two have some curious exchanges. Russell projects a fully realised performance, that bubbles, but you also feel her growing pain and uncertainty of her fragile character. Too bad about the southern accent though. Christopher Lloyd goes offbeat too, but more so in an understated and controlled turn. Sandra Bernhard's Nurse Stein makes an impression. Roeg's leisurely paced direction might not be as beautifully visceral, but winning out is a very gleeful and excessive approach that's high quality. Like Oldman's character, Roeg lets it play out like a kooky tantrum with a lingering mean-streak. The leering camera-work seems to hover on its shots awkwardly, or give it a smothering feeling, and the simmering music score is been kept under-wraps. Another original and provocative piece of work into the realm of surrealistic ambiguity combined with expressive allegories and a sensually twisted flavour. This one really challenges the viewer (like most of Roeg's work), then highly entertains.
