Arlington Road provides a lesson in how the plot of a film can be packed with incredible, unbelievable coincidences, yet the movie can still succeed. Terrific pacing, strong acting and an unpredictable conclusion save this film from the junk heap of its predecessors that couldn't overcome their own contrivance.
The film opens with a gripping scene in which a man finds a burnt and bleeding boy stumbling down the middle of a suburban street. He rushes the boy to a hospital, and later meets the parents, who happen to be his neighbours. Michael Faraday (Jeff Bridges) is the man. He's a Washington, DC university professor. The boy's parents are Oliver and Cheryl Lang (Tim Robbins and Joan Cusack), recent arrivals in the neighbourhood. After months of not even meeting, the neighbours are now instant friends. But before long, Michael starts having doubts about his new neighbours. Michael decides to look into Oliver's past and becomes increasingly suspicious as time goes by.
With typical suburban neighbourliness on the surface, everyone seems to have something different going on behind the scenes. Every time Michael recognises that he's going overboard in his distinctly un-neighbourly investigation, something happens to reaffirm his concerns. As the film builds toward its conclusion, we finally learn what's really going on.
The coincidences this story is built upon are too numerous to list. What's the chance that a terrorism expert would lose his wife to a supposed terrorist, have a suspected terrorist living across the street, rescue the suspected terrorist's son and become friends? It's pretty small. But Arlington Road is so well put together we can almost completely forgive all that, plus the movie's familiar conspiracy theory theme.
Bridges gives the film great credibility, as he makes the demanding role of Michael work. He shows the full range of emotions and wins our empathy. While Robbins and Cusack are almost laughably creepy, they too pull their weight. The pace is terrific, from the perplexing and frenetic opening scene right through to the end. There aren't many dead spots in the film, so we don't get a chance to worry too much about all the coincidences. When there's action, it's credible and only occasionally gratuitous. Best of all, the outcome is up in the air until the final moments. You simply won't know what to expect.
If you're accustomed to traditional Hollywood conclusions... well, watch out and hang on.
