Arlington Road
A Mark Pellington movie
With Jeff Bridges, Joan Cusack, Tim Robbins, Hope Davis
History professor Michael Faraday (Jeff Bridges) meets his new neighbors Oliver and Cheryl Lang (Tim Robbins and Joan Cusack) in a very dramatic way: he picks up their bleeding 10 year old son Brady in the street and takes him to the hospital. Brady makes friends with Michael's son Grant while Michael and his girl-friend Brooke (Hope Davis) cultivate neighborly relations with the Langs. But the idyll of barbecues behind picket fences starts to crack all too soon. Suddenly Michael notices inexplicable discrepancies about his friendly neighbors. What are those strange blueprints in his office, that Oliver seems eager to hide from Michael, how was Brady injured and why did Oliver change his name?
Michael believes Oliver to be a terrorist, but his theories seem so far-fetched that his friends don't want to believe him. Maybe he spent to much time studying terrorism. Maybe he simply hasn't gotten over the death of his wife, an FBI-agent who was killed in a shootout with alleged terrorists. Or maybe he is just jealous of Oliver, because Grant will rather talk to him than his father.
Mark Pellington tackles a hot issue with his story of the friendly neighborhood terrorist. In the USA and elsewhere people prefer to believe in threats from outside, and if it has to be „one of us` then some half-crazed loner who acted on his own. But please, not an organization working in the dark with frightening efficiency and able to hit anywhere and any time. A decent family man who builds shopping malls and takes his daughters to their ballet lessons can't be a member of such an organization, or can he? And what about his wife, the pillar of the comunity who looks as if she never does anything more dangerous than bake cookies in her spare time? Tim Robbins and Joan Cusack are our worst nightmares. A brilliant casting decision. Jeff Bridges however is rather disappointing. His main task is yelling and breathing heavily as he sprints across the set. He can do better. Hope Davis, the token blonde, isn't worth mentioning.
ARLINGTON ROAD could have been one of the best movies of 1999, but the makers relied too heavily on the gullibility of the audience. A little poetic license is granted, and there may be situations where an absurd coincidence is the only way out, but this movie features too many miraculous turns. But even if there are some plotholes still to be closed the ending is spectacular, unexpected and made me leave the theater with a queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach.
-- Book and movie reviews http://sites.inka.de/sites/darwin
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