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Arlington Road

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A Techtite Review

The Film : Horrid. That's the best review of this film. "We need more words," I can hear some film fans saying. Okay, here's two words : total garbage. Four? Complete waste of time. No joke : this was IMHO one of the worst films of 1999, even when compared to Inspector Gadget, Dudley Do-Right, or Baby Geniuses. Yikes!

In Arlington Road's defense, all the above 1999 turkey films made the exact same mistakes as this one does. For one, special FX are expected to have sold tickets; things go boom, and nobody on the set was injured, so pat-pat on the head to the special FX team. Second, admirable acting talent is equally expected to sell the film (in this case, Jeff Bridges, Joan Cusack and Tim Robbins), even though they put all their acting talents on cruise control. Lastly, hire a writer who (one can only guess) apparently felt FX alone would sell the movie. In short, the typical 3-strikes, you're-OUT snafu of modern filming.

The story? Well, Michael Faraday (Jeff Bridges) is a man whose FBI wife was the victim of a terrorist explosion. He feels that neighbor Oliver Lang (Tim Robbins), given certain warning signs, is a potential terrorist, and it is up to Michael to stop him. The problem : he's not an FBI agent, and is merely a college professor. The FBI thinks he's paranoid and nuts. When you watch the dragging film, you're tempted to yell at the screen, "No, please, believe him...so you can catch the crook, and we can return this video rental early for free popcorn." This is not an easy ride; for Faraday, or the viewer. Making things even worse is an idiotic, ridiculous, stupid, moronic, contrived finale.

What drags this film through the mud --even more mud than Baby Geniuses-- is its intent to release complete crapola under the guise of "art film." In other words, everywhere there's a ridiculous plot development, 2D character, or inane dialog segment, it's merely an "artistic statement." Nice try. The secret to making such a claim work, kids, is this : you have to have made something in your life that's actually artistic. Writer Ehren Kruger's most well-known film contribution, to date, was Scream 3 (i.e., the Xeroxed re-tread of prior Screams). Similarly, director Mark Pellington's most well-known directing, to date, was a direct-to-video yawner titled Going all the Way (i.e., Ben Affleck's worst career snafu to date). Does this pair sound like the people who'd release an "art" film?

The best way to conclude this review is to gripe even more about the finale. No spoiler warning necessary here, though I will say that this is Techtite's vote for the worst action-movie ending of all time. Spin control in the media goes on and on about the wonderful, artistic finale, comparing it even to Hitchcock. As a result, you expect to see an amazing plot twist, and instead see a plot collapse. This finale is apparently due to a writer just giving up on a satisfying ending and hoping a half-backsided nonsense poppycock ending will do. Such lack of compassion to its audience caused this film's release to be held back several weeks, in light of the Littledon Colorado school massacre in '99. It should have been held back indefinitely.

The DVD : The "alternate ending" is total garbage. Sorry to be so blunt, though I know beyond any doubt that all watchers of this film elsewhere --all five of them-- will ask that question about the DVD's "alternate ending" promise, first. This is, without a doubt, the best element of the DVD's sales pitch..and its payoff isn't very good.

What does this "other" ending entail? Well, for starters, it involves ruining my DVD player! No joke; the finale clip wouldn't run at all, on my JVC XV-501 BK, no matter how many times I tried it. To make matters worse, for whatever reason, all other dual-layer discs would suddenly no longer run on the player(!). I had to log into the JVC tech support web site and get an 8-step instruction list to re-set the player's EEPROM chip and put things back to normal. I then tried a different Arlington Road DVD, to see if the problem was just with one, single, defective disc. It wasn't, and the second DVD was even worse; back to the 8-step process to reset the system.

In a latch ditch effort, I successfully played the disc on my PC's DVD-ROM drive, and did indeed see the six minute ending...the equivalent of using a sledgehammer to crack open a walnut. The thrills begin via a four-minute gabfest from the nerdish (and not too good with "people skills") director, explaining why he didn't use this "blind" ending, that would've merely pleased the masses. Then the laughable "alternate" ending ensues, and the joy and rapture begins; for all intent and purpose, this is the exact same ending! The only difference is that Faraday's son is watching the TV news, instead of the former close-up of the TV itself. Whoh, dude; I'm speechless at the difference in ending there.

What is almost as disturbing as the film itself, is the comments from the film director. Why wasn't a better ending selected? Allegedly, to prevent the possibility of a sequel. The psychological denial at play here, is that he wouldn't want such a sequel offer anyway; they aren't potentially artistic enough. What laughable arrogance! As if this guy is given offers for sequels daily. Obviously not, pal, so relax. If this is your best attempt at "art film," offers for additional films won't be a likely problem...

	Final Rating : Burnout. A Thumbs-down so low, I need help to get up again. Good celebs and FX, once again, cannot prevent a cold, bitter turkey of a film.
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