Arlington Road

[StevePulaski]

Arlington Road (1999)
Directed by: Mark Pellington

Jeff Bridges and Tim Robbins in Arlington Road.

Rating: ★★★

Arlington Road is a quiet, upper-middle class suburban street in northern Virginia, home to Professor Michael Faraday (Jeff Bridges), his girlfriend, Brooke (Hope Davis), and his young son, Grant (Spencer Treat Clark). Michael is a professor at George Washington University, teaching American history with a concentration in terrorism. He has a good life, but it's hampered significantly by his inability to cope with the death of his wife — an FBI agent who was killed in the line-of-duty during an anti-terrorism operation. He still holds malice towards the FBI and his wife's former partner, Whit Carver (Robert Gossett), who is nonetheless his closest friend.

Enter the new neighbors: Oliver and Cheryl Lang (Tim Robbins and Joan Cusack). Michael meets them in a harrowing way, as the opening sequence shows Michael coming to the aid of their son, badly injured from a fireworks accident. The incident manages to bring Michael closer to his neighbors, yet he grows suspicious of Oliver, who claims he's a structural engineer, his home lined with blueprints. Michael begins to conduct research, invading the family's privacy and driving Brooke mad. He can't shake certain signs that ordinarily add up to no good.

It takes quite a leap in one's imagination to believe the logic in Arlington Road, but it merely takes a patient viewer to appreciate the thrills it offers. This unassuming 90s thriller was made during a time when both the threat and execution of terrorist attacks on American soil was ostensibly rising, and watching it in a post-9/11 world grants a new perspective. Michael's lectures are charged, including one scene where he expounds upon an attack on a federal building in St. Louis that killed more than 60 and was said to be carried out by one man. Michael isn't convinced. "We don't want others," he tells his class. "We want one man, and we want him fast — it gives us our security back." There's truth to this. We want a name, a photo, and something resembling a justification, despite the fact we'll never get a clear motive. The only guarantee is that another attack will happen again.

Screenwriter Ehren Kruger (who would go on to write the later adaptations of the Transformers series) is crafty in predicating Arlington Road on a series of diabolically suspicious details that circumvent into a riveting climax. Implausible? Certainly. Built on one-too-many instances of happenstance? For sure. But entertaining it is, as well as chilling, which is what the target audience is anticipating. The film's first hour moves at a glacial pace, to the point you're not entirely sure what to make of the experience when it's more than half over. Then the final 45 minutes deliver in commendable fashion that makes you lean forward, maybe talk to yourself or the company with whom you're watching it, or simply vocalize what you believe will happen next. I never get tired of movies like this one.

Arlington Road is aided by veteran actors in roles that merge conviction with pulp, although never in the overwrought sense. Michael's slow descension into madness is palpable thanks to Jeff Bridges, who by the end, not only looks like he hasn't slept in days, but acts it too. Tim Robbins only grows more unnerving because he looks his part: a suburban dad with a secret to hide. Then there's Joan Cusack, sure to be overlooked in a role that doesn't afford her a great deal of dialog. That virtue, however, is put to great use during an uncomfortable interaction between her and Brooke at a payphone. Her final line there will chill you because Cusack is that good — in delivery and expression — regardless of the depth of her role.

It's a fair point to say Arlington Road will make you ponder more now than when it was initially released. There's a whole generation of kids who have had to live in fear of bombings, terrorist attacks, and mass shootings their entire lives. The sense of security our parents wax poetic about is long gone. Even with the internet, the explanations for the perpetrators of these attacks only comes across as hazier and incomplete. Kruger's film is just deep enough to penetrate these ideas while also delivering the suspense and satisfaction films of this genre are obligated to bring.

Starring: Jeff Bridges, Tim Robbins, Joan Cusack, Hope Davis, Spencer Treat Clark, Robert Gossett, and Mason Gamble. Directed by: Mark Pellington.