Cheap Track 29 (Video) (Theresa Russell, Gary Oldman, Christopher Lloyd) (Nicolas Roeg) Price

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Customer Reviews of Track 29

"Do you ever wish you were someplace else?"
"Track 29" is perhaps the strangest film ever made by Nicholas Roeg. A very incompatible married couple, Doctor Henry Henry (Christopher Lloyd) and Linda (Theresa Russell) share a boring routine. He plays with his impressive train set (and it encompasses an entire room), and she stays at home--bored out of her mind. They have a perfect showplace home, and she wears jogging suits with matching headbands--anyway, you get the picture. But Henry has a nasty secret little habit he indulges in at work with Nurse Stein (Sandra Bernhardt). Henry and Linda have all the worldly trappings of a happy and contented life, but they loathe one another.

Into this sick little domestic drama enters a mysterious drifter--Martin (Gary Oldman), and his presence resurrects long-buried desires and resentments. Martin claims to be Linda's long-lost child, and he tells her "I've come a long, long way to find you." But is Martin what he appears to be?

Gary Oldman really excelled in this role--he alternates between bouts of Oedipal complex and demon-child rage. Oldman shows his range as he vacillates between fury and inappropriate affection. Watching Oldman loose on the screen, I asked myself, 'what sort of monster would we conjure up to smash all the mistakes we have made in our lives?' It's quite a concept, and I think Oldman does justice to the role of Linda's Juggernaut. Roeg plays with the characters on screen, and leaves just enough doubt and just enough skepticism to ensure edge-of-your-seat-attention. Sandra Bernhardt is splendid as Nurse Stein who indulges Henry's habit when he should be paying attention to his geriatric patients, and Christopher Lloyd was also wonderfully cast in this role. He's at once eccentric (and believably obsessed with his mega-train set), but there's also a nasty hostile side which aggressively exposes itself at key points throughout the film. Even the relatively minor character of Linda's friend, Arlanda (Colleen Camp) is very well done. Linda confides to Arlanda, and Arlanda's face expresses hunger and eagerness for dirty gossip. The confidences are made against the appropriate backdrop of "Cape Fear". The flashbacks are exquisitely achieved. Close attention is mandatory for this film--clues can easily be missed. What is real--and what is the imagination?--displacedhuman.

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One of the worst movies I've ever seen.
The sad thing about it was that this movie had potential, which is probably why it made me so furious. Its director was Nicholas Roeg (The Man who Sold the World, Walkabout) and the main star was Gary Oldman. Not only that it was made by Handmade Films, started by George Harrison, a company that only lasted a few years but made some fabulous movies like "Withnail and I" and "Mona Lisa".
The problem was its script. There was no real story and I felt so sorry for Gary Oldman playing such an obnoxious uninteresting character. Some "twists" were thrown into the middle of the picture but they just seemed ludricous and with only a half hour to go, I ejected the movie.

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The train's off track, but Oldman's worth the ride...
Most people who watch this go away mumbling "where was the plot" it was there, buried, but there. I love this film. Then again, I'm a huge Oldman fan. This was one of his earlier performances and you can see the actor that was to come. His portrayal of Martin, an alcoholic's fantasy version of her long-lost son, is magnificent. He shifts from man to boy, lover to child brilliantly. I wish I could praise his co-stars as highly. Theresa Russell's stiff performance as the bored alcoholic housewife left me cold and, for my money, Christopher Lloyd and Sandra Bernhard could have been left out completely. The only reason to watch the film is Gary Oldman, but his performance makes it worth watching again and again...just keep the ffwd button close.

"MOMMY!"