Michael Faraday (Jeff Bridges) finds an injured boy in the street near his house and takes him to hospital. The boy’s parents (Tim Robbins and Joan Cusack)turn out to be Faraday’s new neighbours, and the more he finds out about them the more he suspects that something is not as it appears.

Arlington Road opened in the UK in March 1999, ahead of its US release. It was a nice change to get to see a movie before the internet word-of-mouth ruins any surprises.

After a loud and stylish opening, and opening titles which are very reminiscent of the TV series Millennium, we are landed with a familiar situation: Spielberg-like suburbs, and sympathetic central characters who gradually reveal their flaws over the next two hours. The plot, at least as far as I can describe it without giving much away, hinges on whether the steadily mounting evidence amassed by the ‘hero’ is a clear pointer to his neighbours’ involvement in some anti-government plot. Alternatively, it could be that he is becoming unhinged by the pressure of his work and the recent loss of his wife.

We’re given a choice of which one to believe, and director Mark Pellington and writer Ehren Kruger manage to juggle the twists and turns of the plot very well until they have to reveal their hand in the last twenty minutes or so.

However if you’re like me you’ll be going to see the actors. Jeff Bridges has long been a favourite of mine, and yet again he creates a believable and complex character with apparently no effort. He does affect another strange vocal style, though not on the same scale as Starman or The Vanishing; in this one he seems to be breaking in a new set of teeth.

He’s given a few problems by the writer as well. As is often the case, the central character is given too much background in order to keep the other characters mysterious. So Bridges is saddled with a career teaching American History, as well as a wife killed the previous year in a terrorist-related incident while working for the FBI. There is some sort of plot logic behind this, which I won’t reveal, but it means we are presented with some very unlikely incidents, not to mention a bad case of flashbacks.

Bridges’ scenes with his university class are particularly clumsy. He gets to rant about nothing specific for endless paragraphs, while we all wonder exactly what curriculum he is meant to be following. Our confusion is shared by his class, who sit with open mouths and furrowed brows. (I couldn’t nail these scenes for a day or two, then I realised where I’d seen this stuff before: Dick Solomon’s class in Third Rock from the Sun.) Of course it’s supposed to be a way of giving him some character depth while not getting in the way of the plot, but it’s not convincing, and actually feels like a political lecture by a third-rate analyst.

Another problem for Bridges is that he finds out early in the movie that something is apparently wrong, and has to spend over an hour looking increasingly worried as more details are revealed. And there are only so many worried faces that anyone can pull. He goes over the edge into modern-Pacino territory in the later stages, possibly because there’s nowhere else to go. Or maybe it’s the strain of being subjected to a few cinematic clichés, along the lines of old newspaper clippings, photos from old school books and the new contender, use of vague criteria in web search engines.

Robbins has a more straightforward part to play, and his role is to wheel out the honest and slightly simple Tim Robbins personality that we all know and love from other movies, but at least he resists the temptation to ham it up. It’s not dissimilar to Keaton’s role in Pacific Heights but fortunately without the melodramatic lighting. If you want full-scale nuttiness from Arlington Road, Joan Cusack’s portrayal of Robbins’ wife as a smiling loon fits the bill, although I did wonder what this couple were doing married to each other.

While these are all terrific performances by any standards, they will probably go unnoticed, as the memorable thing about Arlington Road is the finale. The UK advertising campaign emphasised the twist ending to a point where I expected something much more surprising (along the lines of Sean Connery turning up as King Arthur maybe), but all the same it’s a shock to see a movie with big stars and a reasonable budget end in this way. The actors were very brave to accept parts in this movie, and I fully expect it to cause a bit of a storm if it ever gets a US release, even if there’s nothing here that can’t be found in Garth Brooks videos.

Visually it’s a bit patchy. Some scenes are composed and lit like a TV movie, then all of a sudden Pellington seems to realise he’s got some budget left over, and goes for something much more ambitious. In particular there’s a shot of Bridges sitting in the dark which sticks out like a sore thumb.

Overall it’s a brave and unusual movie, with too many faults to be a classic. Lots of people will hate it, but it’s certainly not easily forgettable.

Mild Peril Rating:

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