BEFORE: You guessed it, Tim Robbins carries over this time, from "Jacob's Ladder". And this will be the start of a 4-film chain with Jeff Bridges. I can't help it, this is just how my brain wants to organize things.
THE PLOT: A college professor begins to suspect that his neighbor is a terrorist.
AFTER: So, it turns out that movies just can't win with me, I'm rather a tough critic. If a film is all enigmatic and non-linear, like "Jacob's Ladder", I'll think "Why can't this film be more straight-forward and easy to understand?" The very next day, when a film is a completely linear narrative, and essentially straight-forward, I'll think "Why can't this film be more symbolic and artistic?" But to me, linear beats non-linear in the end, so this probably gets rated a bit higher than "Jacob's Ladder". That goes against the conventional wisdom from most reviewers, but I stand by it.
As the plotline says, this film is about a professor who teaches a course about terrorism, who starts to suspect his neighbor - but is it possible that he knows a bit too much about the subject? When all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. So he's got this internal debate about whether he's reading the situation correctly, or chasing shadows.
The FBI won't investigate this guy, or even tap his phones without probable cause. Ha ha, that's almost funny considering what we now know about the ramifications of the Patriot Act. Were we ever so naive to think that the FBI and NSA weren't tapping our phone conversations? Or does 9/11 represent that much of a sea change, that before that day we couldn't imagine such a thing taking place, and afterwards, it just became par for the course?
The timing of the film's release is significant, of course - 1999. That's after the Oklahoma City bombing (referred to obliquely here, but with the city changed to St. Louis and the perpetrator's name changed as well) but before the World Trade Center. So the events depicted here reflect the view and definition of terrorism at the time, which is that our borders were safe, but homegrown nutcases were still a problem.
I'm seeing similarities to "The Life of David Gale", but I can't really go into detail without spoiling both plots. I'll just say that they both touch on ways that the media tend to latch on to one narrative after some kind of incident, and this can affect the facts of the case, as most people see them. If you stretch your imagination, it's easy to see how innocent men could be held accountable or found guilty in the court of public opinion, thanks to the media passing judgment before all of the facts are in. Read up on Richard Jewell, who was a security guard at the time of the Atlanta bombing at the 1996 Summer Olympics. He was the man who found the bomb and was initially declared a hero, but after one newspaper revealed that the FBI was treating him as a possible suspect, the media focused on him and profiled him as a criminal, and it took months for him to be cleared.
(There are similarities to another film with Jeff Bridges, "Blown Away", but I've already seen that one, I like it a lot.)
But anyway, back to the film - this one kept me guessing, and if I can say that about a film after I've watched over 2,000 films nearly in a row, I think that says a lot.
Also starring Jeff Bridges (last seen in "R.I.P.D."), Joan Cusack (last seen in "Cradle Will Rock"), Hope Davis (last seen in "Hearts in Atlantis"), Robert Gossett, Mason Gamble, Spencer Treat Clark,
RATING: 6 out of 10 background checks
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