Wednesday, July 14, 1999
The University Daily Kansan
Section B • Page 9
Movie blasts on to the scene with a Kansas connection
The thriller *Arlington Road* chronicles college professor Michael Faraday's (Jeff Bridges) intense, edge-of-your-seat journey into a shadowy world to expose a right-wing group's lethal conspiracy. Contributed photo
By Lisa John
Kanson managing editor
Arlington Road may be where the action begins in this new summer suspense film, but it's not where it ends.
While driving home in a suburb of Washington, D.C., Michael Faraday (Jeff Bridges) sees an injured boy walking down the street. Without even knowing the boy's name or where he lives, Michael picks up the child and rushes him to the hospital.
It turns out that the boy, Brady Lang (Mason Gamble), has lived across the street from Faraday for two months. Michael first meets Brady's parents, Oliver and Cheryl Lang (Tim Robbins and Joan Cusack), in the hospital waiting room where they effusively thank him for helping their son. They explain, though not too believably, that Brady was injured while playing with fireworks.
After Brady returns home from the hospital a few days later, the Langs are hosts of a party at which Michael learns that Oliver grew up on a farm near Carson, Kan. At this point, Oliver speaks the all-too-familiar line, "Toto, we're not in Kansas anymore."
Kansas, indeed. Let's hope that Kansans don't treat their neighbors the way that the Langs treat Michael.
The Langs buddy up to Michael as if they're long-lost friends, and Michael is vulnerable because he continues to grieve the death of his wife, an FBI agent who was killed three years earlier in a gunfight.
Michael's son, Grant (Spencer Treat Clark), and Brady become best friends. In fact, Grant wants to spend so much time at the Langs' home that Michael feels he has lost control of his son.
Cheryl is the suburban housewife with all the charm of a Stepford wife. Meanwhile,
Michael has a new woman in his life, Hope Davis (Brooke Wolfe), a former college student at George Washington University who took the course Michael teaches about domestic terrorism.
Michael learns that Oliver is an architect working on an addition to a shopping mall, but the blueprint that Michael sees in Oliver's house looks more like a federal building than a mall. Further, when Michael accidentally receives his neighbor's mail, he begins to doubt that Oliver is who he says he is.
Michael begins snooping on his neighbor, even going so far as to request college transcripts and a yearbook from Oliver's alma mater, Kansas State University.
Not only does he learn that "Oliver" was not his neighbor's given name, but, in researching microfilm copies of The Kansas City Star, Michael learns that at 16. Oliver was arrested for showing up at a federal office building in Wichita with a pipe bomb. Oliver made the bomb after his father's farm dried up because the government appropriated water rights from the stream that ran through it.
And so goes the fateful struggle between two men — Michael doggedly obsessed with turning up stones in Oliver's life, and Oliver portraying himself as the squeaky-clean, all-American family man. They are on to each other, but will the right man prevail? And who else will be involved?
About the only loose end of the movie is that Michael's son has gone for a 10-day stay at a wilderness summer camp with Oliver's son. My question is why, when Michael suspected that Lang wasn't who or what he said he was, he allowed his son to leave in Oliver's van for camp? Really, if the son was so insistent on going somewhere, wouldn't a sensible father have looked up some old friends or relatives who live near Disneyland and sent the kid there instead?
All in all, Arlington Road is a thriller from beginning to end. And the end, of course, you just have to see for yourself.
Coastal punk hits high notes over soundtracks
Movie soundtracks usually come in two varieties: those that contain memorable songs that become indelibly associated with the movies (Big Chill, Pulp Fiction, Trainspotting) and aggressively mediocre albums with songs that are barely in the movie. If at all (Batman & Robin, Godzilla, Armageddon). This summer, many soundtracks are straddling the line.
Rated R. Running time: 117 minutes.
American Pie's soundtrack doesn't include either of the two obvious choices (Don McLean's song of the same name, or James's "Laid", which is prominent in the ad campaign) opting instead for modern rock's Class of 1999. Unfortunately, it's a pretty underachieving group of students.
Big names Third Eye Blind and Sugar Ray contribute their standard fare, filtered into the ska (hard-edged reggae) and metal categories respectively, while Dishwalla, Tonic and Goldfinger all valiantly try, with little success, to avoid one-hit-wonder status with their contributions. Also featured are previously released tracks from punk brats Blink 182, skra brats the Loose Nuts and 1999's "Most Likely to Wish They Were the Cherry Poppin' Daddies" winners, the Atomic Fireballs.
rere are a couple of strangely misplaced tracks, namely a duet between Semisonic's Dan Wilson and Bic Runga and Runga's own European hit "Sway," both seemingly far too sedate and reflective for their peers.
Then there is the bizarre case of Super Transatlantic, led by the former front man for Saigon Kick. Despite their worldly names, both bands are American, and Super Transatlantic's song "Super Down" is probably the most deserving of radio play out of the whole class.
radio pad.
Overall, most of these kids aren't bad (well, maybe the Atomic Fireballs and Tonic could use some detention), but they're just not applying themselves.
Easewhere on the radio dial, the music "inspired by" (i.e. not featured at all in) Wild Wild West is to urban music what American Pie is to modern rock. Will Smith's song has already saturated the media, and apparently hopes are that the second single on the soundtrack, "Ballamos," by Enrique Iglesias will follow in Smith's (or perhaps more specifically Ricky Martin's) footsteps.
Commentary
Despite having never appeared in Menudo, Igelsias is a big star outside of America, and Ricky Martin fans are likely to enjoy his soundtrack contribution. The rest of the songs on the Wild Wild West soundtrack are by relative newcomers to rap or R&B, such as Kel Spencer, Tatyana Ali and Breeze. None of them stand out.
Dr. Dre and Eminem contribute their enjoyably bizarre track, "Bad
Guys Always Die." one of the only tracks to achieve any real wild west feeling in their music. Between country-style choruses, name-checking the movie's characters and cribbing lines from fellow soundtrack performer Slick
Chris Eckert
Kansan columnist
Rick (whose song isn't at all western related, but it's OK because he's Slick Rick). Dre and Eminem manage to graft gangsta bravado and their love of "the chronic" into an old-west narrative that features some of Dr. Dre's finest crooning since the N.W.A. song "Automobile".
Both of these albums exist primarily to promote the movies of the same name. For those looking for a compilation with a stronger theme, Alternative Tentacles has re-released Not So Quiet on the Western Front, a compilation of punk bands from California and Arizona originally put out in 1982. Cramming 84 minutes and 47 bands onto one disc, Not So Quiet features not only punk legends like the Dead Kennedys, Flipper and 7 Seconds but also many bands not heard from since. All said, this re-release, accompanied by its extensive liner notes, is a compelling snapshot of the West Coast punk scene of the early '80s, which is often overlooked for the early New York or London scenes.
Eckert is a Towaco, N.J. junior in English.
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