Movie "Arlington Road" Questions *OPEN SPOILERS

Cafe Society
1

I’m not sure how I missed this movie as it is more than 20 years old starring Jeff Bridges and Tim Robbins. I was very impressed with it, even though it seems a bit dated now with the theme.

A few questions, but FULL SPOILERS, unhidden as it is an old movie

  1. At the beginning, did Tim Robbins deliberately injure his son to set up the meeting with Jeff Bridges?

  2. If I understand the ending, Tim Robbins and his right wing group have been doing this all over the country (for example, falsely implicating the guy in St. Louis) by the same method as is done in this movie. Is it just me, or is this an absolutely absurd plan which sort of ruins the ending.

So many coincidences had to happen for it to pan out, such as:

a) Jeff Bridges needed to be extra curious about the letter from UPenn and investigating it further instead of chalking it up to an idiosyncrasy of Robbins’ character,

b) the two boys had to be friends and have similar interests; maybe they end up not getting along, or his son is not interested in the Boy Scouts,

c) Bridges has to look at materials about Robbins’ past in areas where Robbins can surprise him to “let him know that he knows”

d) Bridges’ girlfriend must, despite her earlier protestations of there being nothing to see here, happen upon Robbins and watch him exchange cars and then follow him to see the vans. Instead of heading home, she stops at a pay phone leading to the suspicious car crash/murder. With his gf’s death, Bridge’s suspicions are not further aroused (no death, no missed messages, no seeing his phones are tapped)

e) Bridges must physically go to St. Louis to talk to the set-up bomber’s father or else he can make it back in time to get his son from Boy Scout camp. If he just makes a phone call, game over.

f) After the kidnapping of Bridges’ son, Robbins must trust that Bridges will not tell this to his FBI friend who has the resources to evacuate the building and bring a SWAT team down on Robbins,

g) Robbins must then trust that Bridges will personally follow the first van he sees (of which they are many) and follow them instead of phoning the police or the FBI.

h) Robbins must then trust that seeing his son will cause him to drive recklessly through town, not getting into an accident or being stopped by police.

i) Robbins must assume that after stopping him (to give his confederate the opportunity to place the bomb in his trunk) that he will fight back instead of trying to sneak by him back to the car too soon. I mean, why stay and fight when time is of the essence?

j) In addition to the continued chase with the chance of an accident or police stop, Robbins must trust that the guards at the FBI center will react in exactly the same fashion they did, AND that his FBI buddy would be sufficiently close to react as HE did.

Any more absurd coincidences? That seems like a lot of coincidences for this movie (all of which are required or else the plan fails), let alone an often run plot that is repeated around the country. Thoughts?

2

h) and i) were the ones that completely put me off the movie. If the plan hinged on him driving in time for the bomb to go off at the right place, and we see how close he came to crashing, then it is a stupid plan. (This is the primary fault in Skyfall, too.) Any plan that required people to do exactly what you need them to do, no more and no less, are more fantasy than warp drive and sparkly vampires.

And the driving fast and close calls are for the audience, because at that point we’re supposed to be rooting for him to make it. We’re being manipulated, and not in a good way.

The funny thing is, the movie worked so much better when it was called The Parallax View. Now THAT was a depressing thriller!

3

The first time I watched this movie I thought Bridges suffered from some type of split personally disorder and was part of the terrorist pilot however the director Mark Pellington has done other movies involving predestination such as the The Mothman Prophecies. It doesn’t matter how twisted the sequence of events is as the ending is inevitable
Arlington Road really tears along at the end and the director has done many music videos , I really like how the Best of You video by the Foo Fighters hammers along.

4

I haven’t seen this particular movie (when I saw the title, I think I confused it with “Blown Away”), but I find conspiracy films have an “uncanny valley”-style effect with me, where adding additional twists makes it more interesting until one twist too many makes it completely uninteresting.

5

This is a complaint that can be raised against a lot of complicated movies. The real issue is, is the movie well-made enough that you only notice the problem in retrospect, or do you see it as it happens? Are you enjoying the process, or only the end product?

It’s like watching sports. And the end of the day, every play is essentially the same thing - try to get the ball in the net, or whatever. But it’s the how of it that makes the difference between a good game and a bad game.

6

I just read a novel that I enjoyed for the first couple of twists, then another twist happened and it was just ridiculous.

7

I agree, the supposed plan is too reliant on accident to be believable. I don’t mind farfetched conspiracy movies that are unrealistic, but this is crosses over in stupid territory.

8

True. I loved Arlington Road when I watched it. It wasn’t until the coincidences were pointed out to me afterwards that I felt a little silly for having enjoyed it so much. But I shouldn’t have felt silly. I thought the film was well enough made that one doesn’t (or at least I didn’t) notice the coincidences as they happen.

9

For Arlington Road it bugged me in real time. I hated that film, and still do.

10

I didn’t buy it as I was watching it for precisely the reasons noted in the OP. I find the “everything went perfectly to the last second and that’s the only way the plot worked” mechanic very obvious and irritating.

11

If you don’t know that it is a big plot that has been engineered, then it just seems like events happening. Robbins is trying to do something bad, and Bridges is trying to stop him.

It’s only once you realize that everything was engineered that suddenly everything becomes too much of a coincidence.

12

Thanks…but maybe I’m just clueless with these things, compared to Just_Asking_Questions et al.

(Or at least, I’m more gullible to emotion-manipulation cinematic techniques like music, editing, etc.)

I’m less tolerant of CHARACTER inconsistencies. I’ll sometimes think, “That person (as we’ve gotten to know in this movie) would never do THAT” — and I don’t mean deliberate revelations of a surprising facet of a character, rather just poor writing, or sometimes poor acting.

13

It’s been 20 or so years since I saw it, but I didn’t catch on to the plot until he opened his trunk and saw the bomb. Was there then a flashback over all the relevant moments, I don’t remember?

Anyway, it was only when I went back and started piecing together the plot that I started having issues with it.

14

It doesn’t have to be cluelessness: I had an advantage: by the time I got this far in the movie, I realized it was a retake on The Parallax View, with Bridges, in the Warren Beatty role, being manipulated. I wasn’t sure of the details, but I knew if he stopped driving, the plan would fall apart.

If I remember correctly, his car got hit but not totaled. And the had to run a barricade at the building so the bomb could go off, on time in the right place. If the car had been damaged so it couldn’t run, or he had been less motivated to run the checkpoint, the plan would have failed.

Contrast to The Parallax View, where Beatty’s character only had to be in the right building. If he lived or died after the assassination, it didn’t matter. He’d still be The Guy. If the cops killed him, as in the movie, the he’s a Lone Gunman, case closed. If he managed to get taken alive, either he’d still be convicted all the while protesting his innocence, or he’d be Oswalded. Lone Gunman, case closed.

Arlington Road is the director knocking over dominoes, TPV is a creepy paranoid thriller that makes you think about what is and isn’t really true.

15

I’ll check out Parallax View - thanks! (I skimmed over the details in your post, so I haven’t really been “spoiled”).

16

It’s one of those classic 70s paranoid films. Like Three Days of the Condor. No one trusted the government back then.

(I hope it holds up - I haven’t seen it in a while)

17

Or Capricorn One, starring O.J. Simpson.

18

Ok, thanks

19

Oh yea! A perfect example.

Another faceless nameless organization of efficient killers, eliminating anything that stands in their way.

20

Right. I was on the edge of my seat throughout the whole film trying to figure out everything and the big reveal comes and I was saying to myself “No freaking way!” There’s no way it could have went down like that. I don’t want to say it ruined the movie because it was a great ride, but the setup was impossible.