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List Price: $9.99 | | Label: Sony Pictures
Salesrank: 13850
Released: October 26, 1999 |
| Our Price: $2.40 |
| Used Price: $0.37 |
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MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
WIDOWED WHEN HIS FBI AGENT WIFE IS KILLED BY A RIGHT-WING GROUP,COLLEGE PROFESSOR MICHAEL FARADAY BECOMES OBSESSED WITH THE CULTURE OF THESE GROUPS, ESPECIALLY WHEN HIS NEW NEIGHBORS, THE ALL-AMERICAN OLIVER AND CHERYL LANG, START ACTING SUSPICIOUSLY. WITH EACH TWIST THE MYSTERY DEEPENS AND THE QUESTION LOOMS.
Description of Arlington Road:
It's easy to understand why Arlington Road sat on the studio shelf for nearly a year. No, the film isn't awful; rather, it's an extremely edgy and ultimately bleak thriller that offers no clear-cut heroes or villains. In other words, Hollywood had no idea how to sell it. Director Mark Pellington's underrated directorial debut, Going All the Way, suffered the same fate, essentially because the filmmaker's presentation of suburban America often shifts dramatically within the same film. Characters are usually miserable and bordering on meltdown, no situation is straightforward, and things usually end badly. Arlington Road begins as an astute study of suburban paranoia. Michael Faraday (a face-pinched Jeff Bridges, who spends most of the film on the brink of tears) is a college professor who teaches American history courses on terrorism. He's been a conspiracy freak since his wife, an FBI agent, was killed during a botched raid that feels like a thinly fictionalized reference to the Waco tragedy. After saving the life of his next-door neighbor's child, he initially befriends the family (Tim Robbins and Joan Cusack), but soon believes the husband is a terrorist. The first half of the film mocks Faraday: he has no real evidence and is not the most stable of protagonists. Despite the fact that it was government paranoia that got his wife killed, Faraday repeats the same type of behavior. Pellington shifts gears in the second half, however, and for awhile, it seems that the film has simultaneously sunk into a cheap, high-octane brand of Hollywood entertainment and undermined its own point. Arlington Road, though, possesses a stunning ending that's a real gut punch, one that may leave you needing a second viewing to catch all of its smartly executed setup. --Dave McCoy
Arlington Road Reviews:
Unpretentious but excellent thriller 
2009-10-08 - Jeff Bridges and Tim Robbins do a fine job in this terrorist conspiracy theory thriller. The rest of the cast supports ably while the director keeps them all incisively moving allowing no lagging moments to break the pattern of suspense. The film makes the most of the paranoid nature of those involved and how uninvolved innocent people can be caught in their web of suspicions. Good viewing.
Get off the road; immediately... 
2009-01-30 - Okay, look at this objectively and realize that it is not that good. Please, do that for me. I know that it stars two of the better actors around and on of the best supporting ladies out there, and sure, the action is well paced and it has one unbelievably great ending, but when you stack up all the faults here it becomes apparent that this is not as good as it should have been.
The film is smarter than it looks, but sadly it comes off rather dull thanks to uninspired direction.
The film centers around Michael Faraday, a college professor teaching an American History class on terrorism. His wife, a former FBI agent, was killed in the line of duty and the circumstances surrounding her death have thrown Michael into a state of seeming paranoia. This paranoia is only heightened when he meets his next door neighbors Oliver and Cheryl. They seem sweet enough, but there is just something off that raises concern in Michael. Everything he talks to thinks he's crazy, but is he really?
I don't want to give away too much, but the movie does that for you already. That's one of my main concerns. We are expected throughout the first half of the film to slip into Michael's paranoia with him, and feel that he is blowing things out of proportion; but Tim Robbins and Joan Cusack won't allow us to do that. They play their characters with so much obvious `strangeness' that it's shocking Michael is the ONLY one who thinks they are terrorists. I love both actors, but Cusack plays Cheryl like she were a joke really, and Robbins is so unconvincing as a `normal guy' that even when he supposedly convinces Michael he's not a terrorist all he manages to do is further convince us that he is.
My second issue is with the whole middle of the film, and parts of the ending as well. It goes from this `trying to be smart' psychological thriller into this `lets be stupid' action thriller that just throws off any real tension they were trying to build. When Hope Davis hangs up the phone and sees Joan Cusack giving her that ridiculous smile I knew that the movie was just going down hill.
Now, many have mentioned that the end of the film is intelligent and well done, and I agree. The final frames are brilliant, but brilliant to a fault. It's so smart that it makes me hate the balance of the film even more.
Why would they waste such a marvelously thought out revelation on a poorly constructed B-Grade thriller?
That said, Jeff Bridges works very, very hard to elevate this movie, and he manages to get us on his side throughout. He is convincing, even when his surroundings are not. We believe him, and so I hate to fault the film so much because he tries so hard. Oh well, I still love him and I respect him for giving this a try. It seemed good on paper I'm sure. How was he to know that Cusack and Robbins were going to make a mockery of this script? How were we to expect that a film starring some of the most impressive talents working today was going to be such a waste of potential?
In other words; watch something else.
Another Conspiracy Theory 
2009-01-20 - A young boy walks down a street, he is bleeding from a damaged left hand. A driver stops and takes him to the Emergency Room. "I don't know his name." [Could a city street be that deserted?] The boy's parents explain it as playing with fireworks in the park. Michael Faraday is a college professor who is teaching a course on "terrorism". Faraday can't understand why this is happening during "prosperity". [Haven't wages been "stagnant" since 1969 and taxes rising since 1969? Are rural families being dispossessed?] Faraday, his son and girlfriend meet the neighbors. Do the Langs have something to hide? The professor talks about a bombing of a building: was there a conspiracy? Is his lecture convincing? When has a politician ever been a rôle model?
Faraday does some snooping into the background of "Oliver Lang". "People lie all the time." Faraday identifies his neighbor from a yearbook. [Are copies sent to government agencies?] There is a flashback to the FBI raid on a suspect's home. It is explained as the result of a misunderstanding! Did the computer make a mistake? "Garbage in, garbage out." Faraday continues his research into his neighbors, and uses a ruse to enter his home. Later he finds a crime in Kansas City. Why is Brooke against him? Fenimore explains his background to Faraday. Then Brooke sees something suspicious, and follows an old car (too closely)? But she is seen. Brooke makes a phone call, then something happens.
Faraday learns his answering machine was erased. Who could have done it? [Can this be ever prevented?] Faraday learns of a link with a bomber. It connects to his son. Is there some horrible plot going on? Can Faraday talk to his FBI friend? Does he see suspicious packages? Do people abuse rental cars? Is there an infernal plot against a government building? Will there be an exciting chase to perk up the story? Will a fall guy be used to plant a bomb?
This is a very clever film that is low-keyed until the end. Is the story incredible? Can the villains be that clever in their fool-proof planning? Only big experienced organizations can be so precise in their planning. Even then there are few perfect plans, except in movies. [Does this film remind you of "The Parallax View"?]
Effective Low-Key Thriller 
2009-01-18 - Maybe because I expected some of the normal heavy-handed Liberal bias in here with Tim Robbins, I was pleasantly surprised. Oh, it was there but on the mild side. What I found, basically, was an interesting thriller with good suspense and good clever twists at the end. It was nicely filmed, too, and I liked the lower-key atmosphere in here.
Another pleasant surprise was Joan Cusack, who was very effective as Robbins' creepy wife. If you're paranoid, you should like this story. I owned the DVD and traded it, but would like to see it again. It's worth several looks if you wait long enough between viewings to forget some of those twists.
Lousy, no-thrills, predictable story 
2008-12-20 - The ending was so anti-climatic; because if you've seen these type of movies, you know what's going on, and what's going to happen.
You see how Jeff Bridges is Professor Michael Faraday; being manipulated by the terrorists as he feeds off the death of his wife who was a Federal Agent who died in a shootout (a subtle reference to Randy Weaver family at Ruby Ridge); and his disdain for the Gov't not taking the blame for her death the deaths of others at an IRS building (another subtle reference: The Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building bombing). The terrorists put to good use, his paranoia, annoying and insipid behavior to paint a very unbecoming portrait of a man on the verge of the breaking point but, [above] suspicion.....until the end.
There was nothing new about a plot of this type genre. Pieced together from so many other plots in the past. The ending was really hokey. I mean, really hokey. Timothy Robbins did an excellent job of the terrorist leader/architect and master manipulator Oliver Lang/William Fenimore.
