Arlington Road (1999)
In this tense thriller, a man begins to suspect his neighbors are not what they appear to be ? and their secrets could be deadly. Michael Faraday (played by Jeff Bridges) is a college professor whose wife, an FBI agent, was killed in the line of duty by members of an extremist right-wing terrorist group, leaving him to raise their nine-year-old son by himself. One day, he saves the life of a boy he sees on the street. The child turns out to be the son of his new neighbors, Oliver and Cheryl Lang (Tim Robbins and Joan Cusack). Michael soon becomes friendly with the grateful Langs, who seem as cheerfully bland as anyone could hope from denizens of suburbia. But the better Michael gets to know Oliver, the more he becomes convinced that something isn't quite right; Oliver seems almost too clean and perfect, and Michael begins to notice that small details in Oliver's stories don't quite add up. The question is whether Michael's well-founded paranoia about the radical right is getting the better of him, or are the Langs up to something a lot more sinister than their cheerful smiles and manicured lawn would suggest? Ehren Kruger's screenplay for Arlington Road won the Motion Picture Academy's Nicholl Fellowship prize in 1996; the film was the second directorial effort for Mark Pellington, who debuted with Going All the Way.
"Fear Thy Neighbor"
Oliver Lang: Where do we go from here?
Cheryl Lang: Someplace nice.
Oliver Lang: I hope so.
Cheryl Lang: Someplace safe.
Oliver Lang: Definitely.
Houston, Texas, USA
University of Houston, Houston, Texas, USA
Washington, District of Columbia, USA
You need only subtract a few letters from director Mark Pellington's name to get the word "Arlington."The script for "Arlington Road", written by Ehren Kruger, was discovered when it won the Nicholl Fellowship Screenwriting competition from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. This film is only the sixth winner of the competition to actually be produced.The car crash during the climactic chase scene was unplanned; the plan was for the car to duck behind the oncoming bus and complete the left turn. When the collision occurred, the car trunk sprung open, revealing the bright blue sandbags that had been placed there to allow certain stunts. The quick cuts following the collision are necessary to avoid showing the sandbags. Subsequent shots including the car had already been filmed, and show a markedly less-damaged car.
Continuity
The red Ford Contour changes from a '97-98 to a '94-96 model and back to a '97-98 during the chase scene.
Towards the end when Michael is driving toward the U.S. Capitol building, the Capitol building is approximately 4 blocks away. In the next shot it is approximately 8 blocks away.
When Michael Faraday hits the bus with his red Ford, you can see in the following shot that the front suspension on the passenger's side of the car is broken, which would make it very difficult to steer the car properly. In all following shots the front suspension seems to be completely intact again.
The blood on Oliver's face changes during and after his fight with Michael.
In the opening scene, the amount of damage to Brady's left hand varies between shots.
Factual errors
The amount of C4 in the car trunk is not even close to enough to destroy the building. Also, more than one explosion is shown, including one a few stories up, impossible from a single car bomb in an underground parking area.
During the final scene in the FBI parking garage, Michael Faraday opens the trunk of his red Ford. There are only two ways to open the trunk of this type of Contour: You either have to pull a lever at the inside of the car beside the driver's seat or you open it with the key of the car. Michael does not go into the car and he can't also be seen putting the key into the lock under the right tail light. But anyway, he's able to open the trunk.
Lang's yearbook is supposed to be from Kansas State (notice the K-State Wildcat in the front cover) but in the picture Faraday finds, the building Lang is standing in front of - Aycock Auditorium - is actually on the campus of The University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
The "St. Louis Federal Building" discussed at 21:00 in the classroom is actually showing the 25 June 1996 aftermath of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia. 19 US military were killed in this attack.
Incorrectly regarded as goofs
The TV news would never provide such an accurate description of a car nor such a clear picture of the license plate of a car involved in a fatal accident until the victim's next-of-kin have been notified. However, Michael was not her next-of-kin, so her real next-of-kin might have been already notified when the TV was showing the footage.
Michael Faraday mentions Dean Scobee as the driver of the van containing the explosives in a fictitious bombing in St. Louis; any resemblance to a real bombing in another city is, as usual, coincidental.
Lang's yearbook shows him receiving a B.A. under his graduation picture, but Faraday calls him an engineer (and he appears to be one), which would merit a degree of a B.S. at most schools. It's possible he went on to get another degree (though that seems unlikely) or post-graduate training.
Revealing mistakes
The movie is supposed to take place in Washington D.C. However, during the final car chase scenes, the skyline of downtown Houston (which is where most of the movie was filmed) is clearly visible.
The size and style of homes doesn't match those found in the Washington D.C. metro area. It's clear that many of them have western or "Spanish" styling to them which, while not very popular in the older neighborhoods of the cities and towns surrounding Washington where the film is set, are very popular in Houston where the feature was mostly filmed.
When Faraday and Carver meet to discuss what Carver had learned about Lang, some of the birds in the background seem to disappear into clouds and just before hitting the water as they swoop.
Anachronisms
The license plates in the state of Virginia did not have the same sequence of letters and numbers that they have in the movie. Usually, a Virginia license plate has three letters in a row, followed by either three or four numbers in a row, not mixed up like they are in the movie.
Audio/visual unsynchronized
Towards the end when someone says 'Stand-by' into the walkie-talkie, her mouth doesn't match the words she says.
Errors in geography
When the FBI building blows up the wide shot from the Washington Monument shows it as being on the left hand side (west) of the White House. However, in reality from that POV the FBI building is in fact on the right hand side of the White House, 7 blocks east.
When Michael is searching The Kansas City Star online, the subheading says "Kansas' leading news source is now online!" The Kansas City metropolitan area borders both Missouri and Kansas, but KCMO is the hub to the metro whereas KCKS is only a smaller suburb to KCMO. The Kansas City Star newspaper is not in Kansas; it's in Missouri.
The delivery van & Michael cross Arlington Memorial Bridge into Washington (heading east, from 23rd Street NW after that point), but then they are depicted around 8 blocks away turning right (west) from the 1400 block of Pennsylvania Avenue north onto 15th Street up to turn right at F Street - across from the Treasury & adjacent White House - around the Hotel Washington where Michael jumps the sidewalk. Then they are shown coming back south down 12th Street from E Street to turn left (east) back onto the Avenue - at which point, along the west side of the Old Post Office in front of them, is only 2 blocks from the FBI Building. When Michael recovers from his crash with the bus (shown turning north onto 12th Street though there was no bus route going that way) & continues his pursuit, he is depicted first (past the suits with briefcases) having already passed the FBI Building, which then is shown on the left from the closeup POV of the car's left front (accounting for 1st the closer up view of the Capitol vs then the more distant one). The van then appears crossing in front of the FBI Building from the right (9th Street, east) with Michael turning on its west side north onto 10th Street - which is a 1-way southbound street.
Plot holes
If there was enough explosive in the car to do the damage shown, Michael could immediately tell the difference when driving or perhaps even looking at the car due to the added weight.
Boom mic visible
When Michael is sleeping and is woken up by FBI Agent Whit Carver's phone call, you see the boom mic dip in, with white tape around its tip, then swing back out as he reaches for the phone.
Character error
The phone technician played by Sid Hillman, in the scene where he cuts Michael's phone lines looks surprisingly like his girlfriend Brooke (Hope Davis) with her head shaved. This would make for some confusion in the fact that Brooke would have had no reason to call Michael's house from a pay phone, leave a concerning message about their neighbor's, stage her own death, and then cut Michael's phone lines.