Konterr
Brilliant and touching
Dynamixor
The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.
Bob
This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.
denis888
Well, such luminaries as Tim Robbins and Jeff Bredges can probably save any movie from being bore or a drag and make it shining perfect gem. Maybe. This one, Arlington Road, a thriller about terrorism, mistaken identity, unexpected discoveries and shocking truths revealed, is not saved by their performances. Whta is wrong, we may ask. First, and this is a huge, way too huge drawback of many films, is its length - almost 2 never-ending hours. The tempo drags miserably at the beginning, then almost totally dies in the midstm then gets some acceleration, then sinks heavily again, then suddenly gets very frantic. There are numerous plot holes which I ain't going to reveal for fear of spoilers, and several moments are very questionable and scepticism-arising. Several plot lines are very pale and bealk, and thinly-worked out. So, the whole thing seemes like a very promising affair which is very much raw and undercooked and then generously over-peppered at the end.
sirhackenstein
The film keeps you on the edge of your seat through most of the film. You develop a deep hatred for the antagonist (Tim Robbins) and are hoping and expecting to see the protagonist (Jeff Bridges) get revenge and foil the evil plan. But the moment you were waiting for never happens. The end credits role and you are left feeling still angry at the bad guy because he comes out on top. It was definitely unexpected and a clever little twist, but I wanted so bad for him to get caught and exposed. So many movies now end with the bad guys winning in the end, yeah it's not realistic to always have a happy ending but in this case Tim Robbins character is so diabolical you just want to see him pay. I would have given it 8 stars if it ended the other way but I knocked it 1 because the way it ended. A great ending is one of the hardest things to come up with. Too often has a movie got you by the throat, lost deep in the plot, forgetting about the outside world, only to let you down at the end. It's not a bad ending or a stupid ending, just leaves you without justice being done
FilmCriticLalitRao
One often believes that good deeds done by a person are rewarded in some form or another. This belief becomes more strong when two people involved in an exchange of good deeds happen to be neighbors. This observation is the basis of 'Arlington Road', a thriller which has some nice moments of a strong beginning part, an average middle section and a weak ending. For a fast paced thriller, director Mark Pellington has extracted superb performances from all actors especially its lead stars Jeff Bridges and Tim Robbins as neighbors who were beginning to become good friends until some sudden unexpected events impacted their friendship. 'Arlington Road' is also the perfect family film which gives viewers ample idea about the vulnerability of an ordinary man who is used as bait by people who claim to be friends. Apart from questioning the validity of friendship in a fast changing uncertain environment, this film also questions the reasons one might have behind trusting/mistrusting neighbors.
TxMike
I had seen this movie some years back, and now have seen it again, on BluRay from my public library. I wanted to see it again mainly because it is fun to see where it is filmed, many places I am familiar with. In fact the final chase scene, supposedly in Washington D.C. and ending up in a FBI building is actually the underground parking area under One Shell Plaza in Houston, the same building I worked in for a number of years right before this was filmed. The movie is set in the areas surrounding D.C. but except for a few location shots was filmed in Houston and surrounding neighborhoods.Anyway, to the movie, a pretty interesting terrorist thriller. Jeff Bridges is professor Michael Faraday. Not many years earlier his wife, an FBI agent, had been killed in a botched raid. This heightened his interest in terrorist subjects in general. When he finds a young boy wandering down the middle of the street in his neighborhood, bleeding, he scoops him up and takes him to the hospital. That gets him to become friends with the boy's parents, neighbors he had not yet met.Those neighbors are Tim Robbins as Oliver Lang and his wife is Joan Cusack as Cheryl Lang. They seem nice enough but Michael's paranoia gets him suspicious of blueprints he finds in the Lang home, and he begins his own investigation into who these people really are.It isn't a great movie but a pretty entertaining one, Robbins and Bridges are good in their roles, as well as Cusack.SPOILERS: Michael soon finds that Oliver Lang was not his original name, but a name he took as a young adult after the childhood friend of that name was killed. Michael digs and finds that he had been convicted of crimes as a teenager and now suspected he was planning to blow up an FBI building in a terrorist plot. In the end when it appears that Michael might have thwarted the plot, he in fact became an unwitting part of it. The car he was driving actually had the bomb, and in the parking garage in the basement of the building exploded killing him and many others in the building.
