ReaderKenka Let's be realistic.

Mjeteconer Just perfect...

FuzzyTagz If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

Guillelmina The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Indy-11 I tried to watch this for the great Gary Oldman, but this movie is completely unwatchable. The lead actress is wooden, horrible, and has the worst southern accent you could possibly imagine. There are an incredible number of bad 80s films, and this one falls right on the same track (pun intended). Watching Gary Oldman suck a tampon and talk with a diaphragm in his mouth is not something I would wish on my worst enemy.If only Christopher Lloyd had yelled out "1.21 Gigawatts" - I might have given this movie a higher rating.Some other review talked about the scene in which Lloyd's character, Henry, gets spanked by Sarah Barnhard in red gloves. It's very difficult to remove that image from your mind once you see it. This movie was a train wreck from beginning to end.

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

gavin6942 A doctor's wife (Theresa Russell) tires of his obsession with model trains, and spends her days wondering about the son she gave up for adoption at birth...How can you not love a film with Christopher Lloyd as a masochist doctor who drops his pants? And Gary Oldman as a weird, British man-child? And directed by the wonderfully under-appreciated Nicholas Roeg ("Don't Look Now")? Well, with this film, it is possible.Janet Maslin has more than a few problems with it, as she says "the direction is so laden with contempt for the characters... Roeg's films can often be perverse... (but) they are rarely this silly." The film is "too mindless to have any impact" and she believes the actors' skills are "regrettably wasted". I will agree with that last point -- for as much as I love Oldman and Lloyd, I felt they were too confined by this film to really show off.Roger Ebert gave the film three stars, despite saying he did not like it. He posits the idea that the film is "perhaps deliberately" unlikeable. Yet, the film is still a good one and "more interesting" because of it. Roeg's work is "strange" and "convoluted", as well as "bad-tempered, kinky and misogynistic." While I am unsure of all that, I do agree with the overall point Ebert makes. I, like him, did not enjoy the movie. Yet, I see the psychological message it was trying to send, the odd symbolism and the cacophony of images. The direction is, in fact, top-notch. Oldman is frustratingly annoying, but that is who his character is. I think the goal was met, despite being a goal I had rather they were not striving for.

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).