Arlington Road
Official Columbia TriStar (Sony)Site

Starring: Jeff Bridges, Tim Robbins, Joan Cusack, Hope Davis, Robert Gossett
Category: Suspense
Rating: R
Released: 1999
Available for rental.

Arlington Road is a bizarre study on neighborliness. You won't be going to any neighborhood barbeques after seeing this movie, much less lending out cups of sugar. Starring Jeff Bridges, Tim Robbins, and Joan Cusack, Arlington Road is choppy, frustrating, and fails to live up to its potential. It also has a pat ending that I saw coming after the first 20 minutes. If the producers thought it was a twist, they need to see Sixth Sense. Then we'll talk.

Bridges plays Michael Faraday, a professor of domestic terrorism raising a nine-year old son solo. Faraday's wife was an FBI agent who was killed in what should have been a routine investigation. The remaining Faraday men are pale and withdrawn until their new neighbors move in across the street, opening up a whole new happy-happy world of dinner parties and carpools.

Hope Davis plays Brooke Wolfe, the professor's former teaching assistant turned girlfriend. She a self-possessed young woman whose skepticism gets in the way of her good sense. Robert Gossett (The Net, White Man's Burden) plays Whit Carver, the FBI agent who was Faraday's late wife's partner and with her in the shoot-out that killed her. Gossett is probably the most realistic character of the lot.


Robbins and Cusack play the Langs, Oliver and Cheryl. He's a man with shifty eyes and a dangerous political orientation, and she's right out of Stepford Wives meets Serial Mom. There's something very wrong with the Langs. This much is glaringly obvious from the film's opening scene, when the Lang's son Brady is shuffling down the middle of the street with his hand bleeding from a fireworks explosion.


Arlington Road is an interesting edge-of-your-seat type of movie. But not in the good way. No, I was on the edge of my seat yelling "You're an IDIOT!" at Bridges. You might ask yourself if it could happen in real life, but let me just tell you: It could not. Everytime I expected a character to act in a logical manner - or even a semi-normal manner - they checked themselves, turned around 180 degrees, and did the exact opposite.

Faraday's son worries about his dad's girlfriend taking up too much room - but he happily goes off on a week's campout anyway, leaving dad and Brooke alone. Faraday himself is so torn up over his wife's violent death that he falls apart with very little button-pushing. And yet, he's got a seemingly healthy sleep-over-in-front-of-his-son relationship with a smart woman. Arlington Road makes the FBI look like bumbling idiots, tripping over itself at every turn. Granted, the FBI is not infallible - but after so many years of being Mulder and Scully-fied, I don't think we believe it's a clown bureau, either. Another miss on Arlington Road's firing range.

It's not just that I didn't like the senseless story - I didn't like the direction, either. There were too many frame-filling shots of Bridges' increasingly frantic face. Instead of seeing what it is that's making him fall apart (a theme for Bridges?), we only see his face. Arlington Road was a let-down. Unlike the vaguely similar The Siege - which dealt with domestic terrorism intelligently and left me thinking it could happen as a result, Arlington Road had a twist that could have worked - if the pieces had only fit with more precision.

Thumb's Down!