Well, such luminaries as Tim Robbins and Jeff Bredges can probably save any movie from being bore or a drag and make it shining perfect gem. Maybe. This one, Arlington Road, a thriller about terrorism, mistaken identity, unexpected discoveries and shocking truths revealed, is not saved by their performances. Whta is wrong, we may ask. First, and this is a huge, way too huge drawback of many films, is its length - almost 2 never-ending hours. The tempo drags miserably at the beginning, then almost totally dies in the midstm then gets some acceleration, then sinks heavily again, then suddenly gets very frantic. There are numerous plot holes which I ain't going to reveal for fear of spoilers, and several moments are very questionable and scepticism-arising. Several plot lines are very pale and bealk, and thinly-worked out. So, the whole thing seemes like a very promising affair which is very much raw and undercooked and then generously over-peppered at the end.

Mostly mediocre but saved by the ending.Michael Faraday (played by Jeff Bridges) is a Professor, specialising in modern terrorism and terrorist acts on US soil in particular. His wife was an FBI agent but was killed in a bungled operation. A new family moves into the neighbourhood and, to Michael, certain things about the husband of the family don't gel. So he does some investigating...For much of this movie, this was a very conventional, run-of-the- mill thriller. Even calling it a "thriller" flatters it, as it had no twists or intrigues at all - everything was out in plain sight. Then it got even worse, degenerating into mindless chase scenes.However, it redeems itself, to an extent, with a great twist at the end. But for that this would have been a total write-off.

This was an intense little thriller, dealing with the premise that your friendly next door neighbours might also just be terrorists. Jeff Bridges plays a widowed college professor who (in a gripping opening scene) comes across a bloody 10 year old boy staggering down the middle of the street. He appears to have been in some kind of explosion and Bridges rushes him into emergency. These first 5 minutes set the tone for the rest of the movie; dark, mysterious and intense with Bridges bordering on hysteria.The boy turns out to be his neighbours kid whom he makes friends with, but while having a beer in their living room he comes across some suspicious blueprints which sets into paranoia and soon has Bridges investigating into who these people really are. They seem normal enough, but... Tim Robbins & Joan Cusack play the neighbours, -what a great choice for the bad guys, giving solid performances and very atypical for terrorists which made them even scarier.Bridges does a good job too, he has a lot of scenes without dialogue, just him running around figuring stuff out, freaking out, driving fast, yelling, he does a lot of yelling and running with big facial expressions.I will say that while the whole movie was intense there were also sections that dragged, so that the pacing felt off at times.The ending was.... unexpected to say the least. I think my exact words were "holy sh!t he ----- and that just happened, wow." Very un-Hollywood, including a scary spin regarding the angle the media takes post event. 2/6/15

1.Slow-paced: not really in a good old fashion story-unraveling way. Just slow 2.Irritating main character: hysterical, insufficiently smart or logical for a university teacher that teaches the subject he so miserably fails at for the whole movie 3.Bad acting: yea, really. all the good actors didn't do well in this one. 4.Dumb ending: the bad guys master plan must have been based on 99% luck and 1% thinking, again: dumb On the positive side I must say I kinda got into it for about 2/3 of the movie (a slow 2/3). After that it was downhill.So is it still good in 2014? No, it is not. I feel that the series like The Killing, Dexter and some movies that I don't recall at the moment raised the bar for criminal thrillers.