Arlington Road

Arlington Road (in Spain Arlington Road: you will fear your neighbor, and in Latin America Intrigue on Arlington Street or The Arlington Street Horror) is a 1999 thriller film that tells the story of a George Washington University professor who suspects his neighbor is involved in a terrorist plot. The stars of this movie are Jeff Bridges, Tim Robbins, Joan Cusack, and Hope Davis, and it was directed by Mark Pellington. Ehren Kruger wrote the script.

Plot

Michael Faraday (Jeff Bridges) is a widower and professor of history at George Washington University, with a 10-year-old son named Grant (Spencer Treat Clark). One day, Michael comes across a boy who stumbles in the middle of a road in his neighborhood, Brady (Mason Gamble), with horrific injuries to his hands. Michael takes him to the hospital and there he meets his parents, Oliver (Tim Robbins) and Cheryl Lang (Joan Cusack), discovering that they are his neighbors. They soon become friends, and their sons join the Discoverers, a Boy Scout-style group.

Slowly, the Langs' actions arouse latent suspicions in Michael. He sees plans at the Lang house that aren't for the building project Oliver, a structural engineer, claims, and a mistakenly delivered letter suggests he lied about where he attended college. After Michael laments the FBI's lack of contrition after his wife Leah (Laura Poe), an FBI agent, was killed in the line of duty with her, Oliver declares that the government should be punished for its mistakes. of the. Michael's girlfriend, Brooke (Hope Davis), and Leah's former FBI partner, Whit Carver (Robert Gossett), dismiss Michael's concerns as paranoia.

Michael takes his class to a field, the same one where his wife was murdered, and tells the story of that day. Michael blames the FBI for not having investigated enough and for having provoked the confrontation with the family that lived there. The students look restless.

Oliver tells Michael that Grant wishes someone could be punished for his mother's death, which once again arouses Michael's suspicions. He discovers in some files that Oliver's real name is William Fenimore, and that he tried to blow up a Kansas post office at age 16. Michael tells all of this to Brooke, who remains skeptical and decides to leave the house.

Oliver finds Michael looking at his yearbook and angrily confesses that the government took over a lake and land his family lived on, bankrupting them and his father ending up committing suicide. At the age of 16, William decided to retaliate against the state. At the age of 25, William took the name of his best friend, who died at the same age, in order to hide his past from his children.

Michael seems to put the matter behind him. However, a few days later, Brooke sees Oliver swapping cars with a stranger in a parking lot, and follows him to a delivery depot where several metal boxes are being swapped. From a pay phone, she leaves Michael a message that her suspicions may have been correct, but Cheryl discovers her.

Michael finds out about Brooke's death on the news, where it appears she died in a car accident. The next day, Michael inadvertently discovers that the messages he had on his answering machine had been deleted. Suspicious again, Michael calls Whit about Oliver/William and asks him to check the FBI records and records of calls to his home.

Michael visits the father of the late Dean Scobee, accused of blowing up a federal building in St. Louis, from which the Langs had moved. Dr. Scobee is sure that his son was innocent, since 10 children died in the attack and his son would never attack children. Michael becomes convinced that Dean was a scapegoat when he sees him in a photo with Brady, with whom Grant is on a Discoverers field trip, and rushes off to find him. The troop leaders tell him that Grant was taken home with Brady. Michael confronts Oliver at his house, where he confirms that his group killed Brooke, that he is holding Grant, and that he won't release him unless Michael goes back to his house and stops interfering.

The next day, Whit accosts Michael, stating that the FBI found nothing suspicious about Oliver/William or their acquaintances, and says that the "missing" Michael's was from a pay phone. The next morning, Michael leaves his house, rents a car under an assumed name, drives to the pay phone where Brooke made the phone call, and sees a delivery vehicle drive by. She follows him to her warehouse, where she sees some men she recognizes from Oliver's house and from Discoverer photos, loading metal boxes into the truck.

Michael follows the van and is surprised to see Grant at the window. Oliver intercepts Michael's car and beats it up, vowing to kill Grant. Oliver exposes his group's anti-government mission, and his current target is the FBI. Michael overpowers Oliver and drives to FBI headquarters, calling Whit to warn him.

Michael sees a delivery van outside the FBI building and searches the secure parking lot illegally, only to discover it's a different van and it's empty. Whit tells Michael that he is the only unauthorized person in the building. Michael runs back to his own car and discovers a bomb in the trunk seconds before he detonates. The explosion partially collapses the FBI headquarters, as Oliver watches from a distance.

A montage of news clips, portraying Michael as a terrorist seeking revenge on the FBI for Leah's death, shows that the Langs have successfully framed him. Statements from Michael's students (one of whom is a conspirator) support the official story, account for his erratic and paranoid behavior, and infer that he harbored a dangerous grudge against the FBI. Grant, now an orphan, moves in with relatives, tragically unaware of his father's innocence.

In the final scene, Oliver and Cheryl put their house up for sale and prepare to move to another suburban neighborhood.

Cast

• Jeff Bridges like Michael Faraday.
• Tim Robbins like Oliver Lang/William Fenimore.
• Joan Cusack like Cheryl Lang/Fenimore.
• Hope Davis like Brooke Wolfe.
• Robert Gossett as Agent Whit Carver.
• Spencer Treat Clark as Grant Faraday.
• Mason Gamble like Brady Lang/Fenimore.
• Stanley Anderson as Dr. Archer Scobee.
• Laura Poe as Agent Leah Faraday.