Arlington Road
by John Smyth

Rating = **** out of ******

Film Review

When Michael Farady (Jeff Bridges) finds an injured child in his street, he rushes the boy, Brady Lang, to hospital, and is surprised to find that the child's family live across the street. That Faraday was unaware of his neighbours is due to his preoccupation with his wife's recent death. She was a FBI agent who was killed while on duty. Faraday's son, Grant, had become morose and withdrawn as a result, and Faraday himself has become obsessed with her death, to the detriment of his relationship with his current girlfriend, Brooke Wolfe (Hope Davis). After the accident, Faraday becomes friendly with Brady's parents. Oliver Brady (Tim Robbins) is an affable architect working on an extension to a local shopping mall, while his wife Cheryl (Joan Cusack) is a doting mother and becomes an understanding confidant to Brooke. 

Faraday teaches politics at a local college, and one of his courses is on American terrorism, which is clearly an obsession for him, constantly urging his students to be sceptical of the government's investigations on terrorist investigations. His theory is that government investigations are intended to deliver a verdict that reassures the public, rather than catch the terrorists. Describing a recent bomb attack on a government building in St. Louis in which the bomber was also killed, Faraday believes that the government covered up the real conspiracy and blamed the entire plan on the bomber. Why? So that the public could feel safe that the threat had disappeared (along with the building). His distrust of the government is also based on his belief that his wife died because the FBI made a huge error when they sent her on the mission that killed her. Faraday's paranoia soon leads him to suspect that Lang may not be the Joe Normal that he seems. He begins to investigate Lang's background and, after discovering an unsavoury incident in his past, Faraday is sure that Lang is part of a conspiracy, despite Brooke's pleas for him to forget the past and look to the future. 

Arlington Road begins in a very promising manner. A boy staggering along the centre of a deserted but pleasant-looking suburban avenue, obviously in pain and clutching something bloody in his arms. Everything about his surroundings exudes normality and it serves to heighten our anxiety about the boy's plight. In fact, the first half of the film nicely balances the superficial image of a normal, comfortable and safe environment, with the sense of a hidden undercurrent, which belies the calm exterior. Tim Robbins never looks creepier than when he is attired in nice boring sweaters, talking about the challenges of building an extension to a shopping mall. Faraday's constant diatribes against the government remind us that what we accept as normal is not necessarily so. 

However, Faraday seems unaware of the irony that he could be guilty of the very same crime for which he holds the FBI responsible :- jumping to the wrong conclusion. The cause of his wife's death was because she led a FBI team to a secluded farmhouse in the mistaken belief that the owner (who had amassed an arsenal of weapons) was forming a militia movement. A gun-battle broke out between the FBI agents and the owner's family, with tragic results. The FBI computer analysis had flagged the gun sales and the agents naturally assumed a malign motive for their purchase. 

Even more bothersome is the reason for the supposed conspiracy. Faraday complains that the official verdict of the St. Louis terrorist attack (a thinly-fictionalised version of the Oklahoma City attack) was ludicrous - the bomber had supposedly blew up a government building killing scores of men, women and children because the IRS had harassed his father. However, Faraday's alternative theories (that a lot of people with their own grudges against the government have simply clubbed together) do not make much sense either. In fact, much of the conspiracy feels a little like The X-Files (and that's not necessarily a good thing), and tends to reduce the realism and plausibility of the film. 

When it comes to evaluating suspense thrillers, one can draw a line from the sublime (for example, Hitchcock's North by Northwest) to the ridiculous (the recent Hugh Grant vehicle, Extreme Measures). Director Mark Pelington clearly aspires to the work of Hitchcock, to the point that one feels the whole terrorist conspiracy is a McGuffin. Indeed, as 1999 is the centenary year of Hitchcock's birth, it's encouraging to see that the Master has not been forgotten. However, Pelington has a tendency to overdo things. The theme music is completely overwrought - every small event in the movie gets the full 'something-bad-is-just-about-to-happen" treatment. Secondly, the story relies on too many coincidences to propel the plot along (far too often, people just appear from nowhere at just the right moment), and Pelington's directorial sleight-of-hand cannot quite hide all the gaps in the plot. 

On the plus side, there is a great cast - Bridges plays a character so paranoid that he'd have Oliver Stone squirming uncomfortably in his seat. Robbins is his usual excellent self but doesn't get much to do, Hope Lange is quietly effective and Cusack shines in her few scenes (though her role is really only a cameo performance). Of course, there is no point in building suspense if there's no payoff. Since the suspense and thrill of the movie basically hinges on whether we think Faraday has lost his mind or has really uncovered a conspiracy, the film attempts to leave both options open for as long as possible. This drags the film out longer than is necessary, serving to slow down the middle third of the film. However, the film delivers a tense and exciting finale, even if Pelington adds an unnecessary coda to explain what we have just seen.  

Though other movies in the last few years have dealt with government conspiracies (e.g. JFK (1991), Enemy of the State (1998)), Arlington Road most resembles Alan J. Pacula's The Parallax View (1974), which had Warren Beatty as a journalist investigating an assassination and discovering a conspiracy which threatened to draw him in. However, this story (written by Ehren Kruger) is always teetering on the edge of plausibility and one wouldn't be surprised if Faraday warned his students that 'the truth was out there', a la X-Files. The fact is, the film is stranded between trying to make a statement on domestic terrorism (which it doesn't) and spinning an exciting yarn of a man trapped in his own worst nightmare. A few more sinister machinations from Tim Robbins and a little less recycled paranoia would have a made a much better movie. The reputation of the Master is still safe. 

John Smyth  

FilmReview/CineScene, 1999