ARLINGTON ROAD
Well hell... here’s a movie. I was planning on reviewing ENEMY OF THE STATE today, ya know, catching up. However, after I was finished with SOLDIER this afternoon, and after I wrote my review, I got a call from a fella here in town that said I had to see a film he had. He said it was called ARLINGTON ROAD.
Now I’ve run good reviews and bad reviews of the film, but this fella was raving about it. Saying it was the best conspiracy film ever. He told me it would ‘make me think’.
Well that’d take a miracle, and since my brain was in atrophy after watching the wrenching piss bucket that was SOLDIER, and having room before THE WARRIORS, I decided what the hell.
About thirty minutes later the fella showed up at my house and took me to his place. I told Dad to get Joad and Johnny Wad, and to gather em up at the Drafthouse, I’d meet them there.
The fella. Sheesh, I don’t run into too many straight and narrow types but this fella made Robogeek look like a long haired hippie. But he had this look in his eyes like... Kevin McCarthy at the end of INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS.
I’d never heard of the director or the writer. However, Jeff Bridges, our childhood hero FLYNN and THE DUDE, well he’s one of my favorite guys on screen. To me, he picked up on what Harrison Ford was doing in the mid-eighties and decided to do it. You know... Take something like WITNESS, FRANTIC, PRESUMED INNOCENT, WORKING GIRL, MOSQUITO COAST, etc... Working with wonderful directors in varying parts. As a result I love everything the man does, well... almost.
Then TIM ROBBINS has just been amazing in the nineties. Joan Cusack is just a weirdo sweetie that strikes that giggle chord in me. And well... that’s pretty much all I knew in this film. Well except for Angelo Badalamenti. He’s our conductor of our subconcious in the land of Lynch, and he does a wonderful job there... and here.
I have to say I did not see this in ideal conditions. The guy didn’t have surround sound. He had a tiny friggin TV (under 20 inches) and well... I just wanted anything to keep my mind off the shitfest that was SOLDIER.
He popped in the tape (friend worked on the film allegedly) and BAMMMMMMMMM...
This film is set in a parallel universe about 3 inches to the left of us. It builds off the events at Ruby Ridge and the Oklahoma bombing.
In our world today we have a very precarious mental state of safety. You turn on the nightly news, and we hear about local deaths, weather, global deaths, sports, political stuff and then finally entertainment. There are those of us here in the world that put it all together. That see conspiracies all about them.
One of my favorite pasttimes is to get my friends together and see if I can weave together enough fact and fiction to just scare the shit out of them. And if they somehow begin falling for it, I do the ol April Fools bit.
But still I love putting events together. Stuff like Clinton’s people announcing the balanced budget followed by the breaking of the Monica Lewinsky story 6 hours later. Stuff that makes ya go... hmmmmmm.... Or scientist announcing an asteroid coming to hit earth in 40 some odd years that could end life as we know it, followed by other experts 24 hours later saying it’ll miss us by a few million miles, but the original guys never saying the same thing. Stuff that makes ya go hmmmmm...
Now that’s your big world wide government is trying to fool the masses stuff. But more of us are of the Jimmy Stewart looking out our window into the lives of those around us. It’s to make up for the lack of interest in our own lives.
I remember a few years ago, my father and I were convinced these neighbors were drug dealers. We just knew it. Then suddenly the house was never busy, the front door slightly ajar, and noone was ever around. For two weeks Dad and I thought about going in. To see what we would see. But having heard about drug people attaching explosives to their shit... well we decided not to. A couple of days later the DEA, FBI and the local law people found $2million in cash and $4 million in coke. You should have seen the look on our faces. We two Sherlocks were walking around like the Holmes man. Holding our heads high.
But 2 years ago when I bomb was found in a house 4 houses down, and it was detenated by the bomb squad.. Well that scared us. What scared us more was the fact there was no mention whatsoever in the papers about it.
Later I met the Bomb Squad guy, and he told me that he goes on about 4 calls a day. That’s a shit load of bomb scares. He told me most have something. Ya see, that crap doesn’t appear in the papers cause... well it just doesn’t make locals feel good about themselves. They don’t want to stir the natives. Or at least that’s what the paranoid in me says. Of course there is the ol saying that unless a bomb goes off... well it ain’t news. And that is pretty damn sickening if you ask me.
So when something like the Oklahoma City bombing or the Atlanta Abortion Clinics or the World Trade Center stuff happens. Well they’re isolated incidents caused by individuals or limited groups. Everyone is either dead or in jail quickly thereafter and we regular folks can go about our lives feeling good.
THIS MOVIE SCREWS WITH THAT SECURITY.
It unsettles. Have you seen FAILSAFE? How about CHINA SYNDROME? SILKWOOD? THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR?
The above are HORROR films. Truly horrifying. Now I don’t know for sure, but the negative reviews may be coming from people that... just don’t like the questions and the issues brought up by this film.
As it is right now, we live in a world where we don’t look into who our neighbors are. We don’t want to know. Jeffery Dahmer, Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy... they were neighbors to someone. Someone saw them everyday, and thought they were good neighbors. Hell, my grandfather was good friends with Charles Whitman. Whitman was a leader in my father’s Boy Scout unit that my grandfather was Scoutmaster of.
The day before Whitman did what he did in Austin, he paid a visit to my Grandfather and offered to buy his M-1 carbine. My Grandfather instead told him of a shop where they had one just like it. He didn’t think about it. Gramps (my name for my Grandfather) just assumed Whitman would go hunting with it, just like he did. Needless to say, the next day changed my Gramps’ palor a bit.
People seem innocent to innocent eyes and guilty to guilty eyes. And this movie makes you wonder why your answer machine missed a couple of messages. It makes you wonder why two extra cars are at your neighbor’s house. It makes you wonder why when you bump into them at a grocery store or at a mall. It makes you wonder.
The film, I feel is one of the unsettling pieces of paranoia I’ve seen on film, and makes ENEMY OF THE STATE look soft. Do not read any more reviews for the film. If someone says they saw it, move away from them. You don’t want to know.
Suffice to say, the movie will cause a reaction in you. Either you will come away loving the fact the movie got ya. That you don’t want to go home. That you want to lock your family up and take them to a 50 acre ranch in Montana. OR you will hate the film with a passion because it made you feel less safe than you did two hours before.
Once again Tim Robbins just nails a performance. He’s sooooooo good in this. And I just love Bridges. Whoever this Mark Pellington is, we need to keep an eye on him. He did a wonderful job putting this film together. But I suspect a big buttload of praise should be heaped on Ehren Kruger’s shoulders. His screenplay just terrifies.
Like PLEASANTVILLE the movie sort of tears the fronts of houses off to show what lies inside. I’m not going to go further than that right now, because well the movie won’t come out till January of 1999. I wonder if they are gonna hedge their bets with a week in L.A. and N.Y. Hmmmmm....
