Arlington Road

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Movie
German title Arlington Road
Original title Arlington Road
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1999
length 113 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Mark Pellington
script Honor Kruger
production Tom Gorai ,
Marc Samuelson ,
Peter Samuelson
music Angelo Badalamenti
camera Bobby Bukowski
cut Conrad Buff IV
occupation

Arlington Road is a 1999 psychological thriller directed by Mark Pellington and starring Jeff Bridges and Tim Robbins .

action

Michael Faraday is a professor of history at George Washington University and an expert on American terrorism. Since his wife Leah, a former FBI agent, was killed in an unsuccessful operation against alleged assassins, research in this area has become an obsession for Faraday . Nevertheless, together with his new partner Brooke Wolfe, who was once his assistant, he takes care of his young son Grant.

One day he meets a little boy with severe burns on the street, takes him to a hospital and thus saves his life. It later emerges that the boy is the son of new neighbors Oliver and Cheryl Lang, whom Faraday had not met before and who explain that the burn was caused by playing with fireworks. Faraday and Wolfe gradually become friends with the Langs.

Oliver Lang is a civil engineer. During a visit to Lang's house, Faraday happened to see his construction plans and was puzzled because he believed they were plans for an office building, but Oliver explained to him that it was a shopping mall. A few days later, Faraday happened to receive a letter from the University of Pennsylvania addressed to Oliver , even though Oliver had told him he had attended Kansas State University . Having grown suspicious, Faraday investigates and discovers that when Oliver Lang was a student at the University of Kansas, his real name was William Fenimore. He also finds out that Fenimore built bombs at the age of 16 and was active in terrorism. Now he's trying to get more information from the FBI agent and former colleague of his wife, Whit Carver.

Faraday tells his partner Brooke about the assumption that William Fenimore wanted to cover up his past by changing his name shortly after the death of the real Oliver Lang, continues to be terrorist and maintains a bourgeois facade for secrecy. Brooke does not believe him at first until she observes Oliver doing dubious machinations and puts her life in danger. She speaks Faraday on the answering machine and then dies in an unclear way, allegedly in a car accident. When Faraday later discovers that messages on his answering machine must have been deleted on the day of Brooke's death, his suspicions about his neighbor are confirmed. He contacts the father of Dean Scobee, who is said to have committed a suicide attack in St. Louis, since St. Louis was the last residence of Lang, alias Fenimore, before he became Faraday's neighbor. Scobee asserts that his son was not an assassin, but a victim. A photo showing Dean Scobee with "Brady Lang" finally convinced Faraday that the terrorists systematically use innocent people as scapegoats for their crimes in order to get away with impunity themselves. He then contacts FBI agent Carver again, who does not believe him and thinks he is paranoid. Now the terrorists kidnap Faraday's son under the leadership of Oliver Lang.

In a desperate attempt to free his son and prevent an attack, Faraday pursues the terrorists who have disguised themselves as employees of a logistics company. When he learns that the final preparations for a bomb attack on the J. Edgar Hoover Building - the headquarters of the FBI - are in progress, he warns Carver and tries to thwart the attack himself. He follows a suspicious delivery truck into the FBI premises and realizes too late that he himself has brought the bomb in the trunk of his own car into the building through a trick of the terrorists. It explodes remotely and kills him and many FBI employees. The attack was thus successful for the terrorists in two ways: on the one hand, a federal agency was severely hit, and on the other hand, it looks to investigators and the media as if Faraday himself had the terrorist attack out of revenge for the death of his wife as a single terrorist perpetrator perpetrated.

background

  • Two aspects of the plot appearing in the film are very similar to real events: The case of Copper Creek described in the film , in which Faraday's wife was killed in a shootout between FBI officers and a remote family, is reminiscent of Ruby Ridge in Idaho from the 1992. The bomb attack on the tax authorities in St. Louis described in the film has parallels to the bomb attack on the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995.
  • Filming took place from February 2 to April 21, 1998 in Houston and Washington, DC .
  • Production costs were estimated at around $ 31 million. The film grossed around $ 41 million in cinemas around the world, including around $ 25 million in the United States.
  • The cinema release in Austria was on March 19, 1999, in Germany on April 1, 1999 and in the USA on July 9, 1999.

Reviews

  • The magazine Cinema attested the film a "tremendous pull", described it as confusing and fascinating and awarded the equivalent of 4 out of 5 points.
  • In the Chicago Sun-Times of July 9, 1999, film critic Roger Ebert criticized the film's logic errors and the implausibility of the script, especially in the last 30 minutes.

“An enigmatic, brilliantly played thriller that cleverly balances the alleged double life and the paranoia that comes to the fore. By refraining from prematurely assigning blame, it offers gripping and multi-layered suspense. "

- film service 7/1999

Awards

  • The film received three nominations for a Saturn Award 2000:
    • In the Best Action / Adventure / Thriller Film category
    • Joan Cusack for Best Supporting Actress
    • Honor Kruger for Best Screenplay
  • Joan Cusack was nominated for a Chlotrudis Award 2000 for Best Supporting Actress.
  • Director Mark Pellington was nominated for a prize at the 1999 Paris Film Festival.
  • The German Film and Media Evaluation FBW in Wiesbaden awarded the film the title valuable

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Locations. Internet Movie Database , accessed May 22, 2015 .
  2. ↑ boxofficemojo.com
  3. ↑ Release info. Internet Movie Database , accessed May 22, 2015 .
  4. ^ Arlington Road. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used