Arlington Road is a film which is very much a product of the paranoia in America during the late nineties surrounding the rise of domestic terrorism. It's not a coincidence that it came out shortly after the capture of the Unabomber, the Oklahoma city bombing, and Waco as they are clearly the events which shaped the films themes and narrative.
It was a time in American history where the threat of domestic terrorism was beginning to invade the public's consciousness, the idea that even your own friends and neighbors could be enemies of the state, that blue collar ordinary people could be willing to kill indiscriminately driven only by their hatred and distrust of the American government was a horrific notion that perhaps once seemed improbable or unthinkable but by the mid-ninties this fear was an absolute reality and the film reflects that.
The film itself is a Hitchcockian-esque thriller featuring two excellent actors, those being Tim Robbins and Jeff Bridges. The overall story is quite good and the ending is great but there is something lacking about it for me. It's a bit bland and vanilla, especially considering its controversial subject matter, I think it does at least try to approach whats frightening about domestic terrorism, and that's that in some cases you can actually empathize with the individual's grievances with society and their philosophy which is driving their actions but somehow it manages to approach the subject without ever feeling particularly dangerous.
It's a late nineties crime thriller,
its a bit cheesy, predictable and average
but not bad by any stretch of the imagination.
Add comment
Comments