Sick Product of a Sick System

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

I was slightly perplexed that most of the other people who commented on this classic Dennis Hopper film either didn't understand the ending, or thought the ending was stupid. It's very clear to me.This whole film is nothing more than a symbolic train ride to hell. The 1940s World War II-era soundtrack is a backdrop for a "popular" war. A war where the entire nation banded together to serve and defend their country. Dennis Hopper's character is a baby-boomer brought up with the backdrop of World War II, a war of honor. His "war" is the complete opposite; shunned and protested. He keeps constantly playing the old time music to help him reinforce his beliefs that his service in Viet-Nam was the good and decent thing to do. The people on the train are symbols of our nation; wrapped up in every their everyday lives, totally unconcerned or pre-occupied with the war which was so far away. The ending is a brutal statement that the only way the public could come to grips with the experiences with the combat veterans was to bring the horrors of the war back home. Tracks is an out-standing, yet controversial, and highly symbolic view on the horrors of the Viet-Nam War. Seems to me that this movie couldn't be re-made today; only updating it to the war in Iraq. How sad that some 30 years later, Tracks is still not an out-dated film about the horrors of war, and the public's indifference to the suffering of the soldiers fighting over there.

Viet-Nam! Yep, this is one weird, strange, bizarre, and haunting train ride. A train ride back from Nam......A train ride back home.....a train ride to doom! An outstanding performance by Dennis Hopper; his best. Playing a U.S. Army Sargent escorting a dead friend's coffin back home for burial, Hopper goes through a journey of self-reflection. With a haunting sound-track of popular World War II songs as a backdrop, it's a train ride to doom. It's a symbolic ride of happiness, humor, friendship, lust, love, hate, despair, guilt, betrayal, and death; America's journey through the Viet-Nam War years. It's not an easy movie to watch and to younger viewers it most likely will make little or no sense, but it's a truly outstanding motion picture. The ending is one of the most shocking and surprising in film history. Tracks is fantastic.

Dennis Hopper is an actor that I am almost ashamed to admit I like but he is. This is a fine film and one of his best performances. You can tell he is stoned throughout much of the film but he still delivers playing a tormented man. This was one of the first Hollywood films to deal with Vietnam and one of the best. Hopper sears the screen as the man who cannot let go of the hell of war. I liked the WWII songs they play in the film like "Were Gonna Have To Slap a Dirty Little Jap" and "Theyll be a hot time in the town of Berlin". Henry Jaglom is a real genius of a director and I think this is his best film. It has never been shown on Tv as far as I know and it is a real loss. Rent and and be amazed.

This movie started out so wonderfully intriguing....and then fell apart so awfully hard. It was downright painful for me to watch this movie die...I had such hopes for it. All these characters riding on a train...all their lives intertwined for the short journey...people with Secrets...simultaneous conversations recorded so spontaneously I felt like I was eavesdropping. Scenes of sexual intimacy that made me feel like a voyeur...Dennis Hopper running through the train completely naked, making me turn my head away like a startled passenger... The more I think about it, the angrier I get...surely someone could have rewritten the last half of the script and turned this film into something much, much better. As it is, I just watch my favorite scenes from the first half of the movie over & over again....the conversations with Dean Stockwell are priceless. (And hey, isn't he wearing the same pair of tennis shoes in Paris, Texas?).