7/10
Intense little thriller with an ending I didn't expect
26 February 2015
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
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