Arlington Road

THE BEST pure thriller I've seen in several years, Arlington Road practically gave me a heart attack, and I'm convinced it will hospitalise a few people before its run is up.

Though nominally a political thriller, it owes considerably more to Alfred Hitchcock than Oliver Stone - it's one of those rare psychological thrillers that end up actually moving you on a physical level, jolting you out of your seat and fucking around with your mind while your heartbeat starts knock-knock-knockin' on Hell's door. By the time the thing finished, I felt strongly tempted to kill my own shadow just to be on the safe side.

The ever-supreme Jeff Bridges plays a widowed college professor who lectures on political terrorism (his wife was an FBI agent), and saves a ten-year-old kid from bleeding to death during an accident. He is befriended by the kid's grateful parents - neighbouring married couple Robbins and Cusack - and they begin to spend appreciable amounts of time in one another's company, as do Bridges' son and girlfriend (Hope Davis).

Somewhere along the line, something inexplicable hints to Bridges that all is not quite as it seems, and the suspicion develops in his mind that Robbins and his wife, apparently the ideal suburban family, are in fact ruthlessly dedicated right-wing terrorists bent on large-scale extermination. But since Bridges is a specialist in exactly that subject, the assumption is that he's just being paranoid and excessively sensitive.

The tension count starts to go through the roof at around the one-hour mark, as the script spins skilfully and brilliantly towards an apocalyptic payoff. Davis is an intelligent and humane presence, but the other three performances are as close to perfect as acting can get. Bridges is a whirlwind, an increasingly driven and frayed presence caught up in a nightmare way beyond anything he'd ever imagined. Robbins is every inch his equal - 'there's no art to find the mind's construction in the face' - while his wife Cusack puts them all in the shade, as a wholesome all-American housewife so normal she's downright terrifying, infinitely scarier than any Stepford wife ever was.

Arlington Road is not a political film, has no particular message to impart regarding the nature of right-wing terrorism, and is unlikely to be the last word on a morbidly fascinating topic which should prove fertile ground for American film-makers in the years to come. What it is, essentially, is a rattling good thriller, as unsettling, stimulating and thought-provoking as they come, with twist piled upon twist, and wrapped up in a gloriously shocking finale that leaves you staggering dazed out into the sunlight.