A man begins to suspect his neighbors are not what they appear to be and their secrets could be deadly.
In suburban Reston, Virginia, George Washington University American History professor Michael Faraday is still mourning the death of his wife, FBI agent Leah Faraday, after three years. His inside knowledge of the agency colors what he teaches in his classes. Although on good terms with Leah's ex-partner, Whit Carver, and the agency in general, Michael wants the agency at least to acknowledge their responsibility in her death in the line of duty. Michael is moving on with his personal life, he being in a serious relationship with his former teaching assistant Brooke Wolfe. Although he likes Brooke, Michael and Leah's nine year old son, Grant Faraday, may not yet be quite ready for Brooke to be a permanent part of their lives. It is only in helping adolescent Brady Lang who he sees in medical distress that Michael meets his new neighbors, Oliver and Cheryl Lang, Brady's parents. In the process, Michael and Brooke becomes friends with the Langs, as Grant and Brady become friends. However, the more time that he spends with them and catches discrepancies in their stories, Michael becomes suspicious that the Langs may not be everything they appear on the surface. As such, Michael, against Brooke's concerns of invasion of the Lang's privacy, begins his own investigation of Oliver in particular. What Michael discovers has serious national security implications, as well as possible life threatening dangers to him, Brooke and Grant.—Huggo
In Washington, Michael Faraday is coming home in the suburb and he sees the son of his neighbor, Brady Lang, burnt and wounded walking through the Arlington Road. He goes to the hospital with the child and befriends his neighbors Oliver Lang and Cheryl Lang that live in front of his house in the waiting room. The widower Michael is history professor at George Washington University, where he presently teaches terrorism, and raises his son Grant Faraday alone since the death is his beloved wife Leah. She was an FBI agent that died in action during an assignment with her partner Whit Carver. Now Michael is in a relationship with his former student Brooke Wolfe. Soon Michael suspects of Oliver might be a terrorist initially based on a blueprint that his neighbor tells that it is a shopping mall but Michael believes it is a building and with returned correspondences in the mailbox. However his theory of conspiracy is rejected by Whit and Brooke. Michael becomes obsessed and investigates the life of his neighbor. Is Michael paranoid or is he correct in his suspicious?—Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Widowed when his FBI agent wife is killed in an operation against suspected terrorists, a college professor becomes increasingly obsessed with the culture and sub-society of these dangerous groups. The arrival of new neighbors, gives him new spirit, as they are gregarious and friendly, with a ten-year-old boy that his son can be friends with. He is even beginning to see another woman. However, he begins to suspect something is odd about the neighbors, something about the way they don't want him to see certain parts of the house, or a set of blueprints they have there. Are his neighbors terrorists... or is the stress of losing his wife merely driving him past the point of paranoia?—Anonymous
Michael Faraday is a recently widowed college history professor living alone with his ten-year-old son Grant in the suburbs of Washington, DC. The death of Michael's wife Leah, an FBI agent killed in the line of duty, continues to haunt both father and son. Michael and Grant are soon befriended by the Langs, a vivacious, All-American family new to the neighborhood. The parents, Oliver and Cheryl Lang, go out of their way to draw Michael into their lives. Soon, Grant and young Brody Lang become inseparable friends. The Faradays' long period of mourning seems finally to be over. As the two families become closer, Michael begins to have misgivings about the gregarious Oliver. After catching Oliver in a few insignificant lies, the more Michael learns about Oliver, the more his uneasiness grows. With Grant spending more and more time at the Langs, Michael decides to check into the background of his neighbors. What he discovers deepens the mystery, arousing suspicions that shake Michael to the core of his existence. The Langs are definitely not who they claim to be; but who are they? Why have they come to Washington, DC?—PFE publicity
Michael Faraday (Jeff Bridges) is a widower and college history professor at George Washington University with a 10-year-old son, named Grant (Spencer Treat Clark). While driving through his suburban neighborhood, he encounters a boy, Brady (Mason Gamble), staggering in the road with horrific injuries to his hands. Michael takes him to hospital, and meets his parents Oliver (Tim Robbins) and Cheryl Lang (Joan Cusack), discovering they are his neighbors. The families soon become friends, and their sons join the Discoverers, a Scouts-style group.
Actions of the Langs arouse latent suspicion in Michael. During a get-together, Michael sees blueprints in the Lang's house which are not for the building project Oliver, a structural engineer, claims, and a wrongly delivered letter suggests he lied about where he attended college. Over dinner, Michael describes impersonal treatment from the government after his wife, an FBI agent, was killed in the line of duty. Oliver states his belief that the government should be punished for its mistakes. Michael's younger girlfriend, Brooke (Hope Davis), and his wife's former FBI partner, Whit Carver (Robert Gossett), dismiss Michael's concerns as paranoia.
On a field trip to the site of the standoff in which his wife was killed, Michael describes to his college class what he sees as a needless tragedy: that although certain activities of the besieged family raised "flags," other facts, not investigated before the FBI visit, both exonerated them and explained their wariness of the FBI agents, which provoked the standoff. Michael's students appear uneasy at the intensity with which Michael condemns the FBI's actions.
Conversing with Michael, Oliver says that Grant wishes someone could be punished for his mother's death, at which Michael is again suspicious. Researching archives, Michael discovers that Oliver's real name is William Fenimore, and that he tried to blow up a post office in Kansas at age 16. He is seen by Oliver, who later confronts him, incensed at Michael's intrusions and presumptions of judgment. He states that he was retaliating against the government for seizing his family farm's water supply, which rendered it unusable and eventually led to his father's suicide. He states he was imprisoned, and admits to assuming the identity of his deceased friend Oliver Lang to hide his criminality from his children.
Michael appears to let the matter drop. However, Brooke later sees Oliver swap cars with a stranger in a parking lot, and follows him to a delivery depot where a number of metal boxes are exchanged. From a payphone, she leaves Michael a message that his suspicions may have been correct, but is discovered by Cheryl.
Michael learns of Brooke's (off-screen) death on the news, where it appears she died in a car crash. He discovers inadvertently that messages left on his answering machine had been erased, and again suspects foul play, telling Whit about Oliver/William and asking him to check FBI records, and records of calls to his home.
Michael travels to St. Louis, Missouri where he visits the father of Dean Scobee, accused of blowing up a federal building in St. Louis, from where the Langs had moved. Dr. Scobee is certain his son was not the perpetrator of the bombing since 10 children were killed, which he would never have done knowingly. Michael becomes certain that Dean was set up when he sees a photo of him in a Discoverer troop with Brady, with whom Grant is currently on a field trip. In a panic Michael rushes back to Washington to retrieve Grant, but is told by troop leaders that he was taken home with Brady. Returning home, Michael does not find Grant and confronts Oliver at his home. Oliver confirms that he knows all about Michael's excursion to St. Louis and also confirms that his group killed Brooke, and implies that Grant will be killed if Michael tries to involve others.
Whit accosts Michael the following day, stating the FBI discovered nothing suspicious about Oliver/William or his acquaintances, and says that Michael's 'missing' telephone message was from a payphone. The next day, Michael rents a car under a false name and drives to the payphone where he seeing a passing delivery vehicle, follows it to its depot, where he sees men he recognizes from Oliver's house and from Discoverer photographs, loading metal boxes into the van.
Michael follows the van and is shocked to see Grant at the window with the Discoverer taskmaster, and gives chase. Oliver blocks Michael's car with his own, causing a crash, and drags him to an abandoned building where he beats him, saying Michael will not see Grant again. Oliver believes his group is waging war against the government, and states their target is the FBI. Michael overpowers Oliver and drives to FBI headquarters, calling Whit at his office to warn him.
After frantically driving his car through the busty streets, Michael sees a delivery van at the gate and illegally pursues it into the secure parking garage, but discovers that the van has a different driver and is empty. Whit tells Michael that he is the only unauthorized person in the building, in panic Michael rushes back to his own car discovering at the last moment that the conspirators have planted the bomb in his own car trunk seconds before it detonates. Michael, White, and hundreds of government agents and civilians are killed in the massive blast which partially collapses the FBI headquarters. Oliver impassively watches the bombing from a distance.
In a montage of television news clips, Michael is portrayed as a lone wolf terrorist who had sought revenge for his wife's death and targeted the FBI, in particular her former partner, Whit. Statements from his students (one of whom is a conspirator) support the official story, giving accounts of his erratic and paranoid behavior in the days prior and inferring from them that he held a dangerous grudge against the FBI due to his own actions. Grant, now orphaned, moves in with relatives, tragically unaware of his father's innocence. All of Michael's actions in the days beforehand played right into the Langs plans to frame him for their terrorist attack against the FBI headquarters.
In the final scene, after seeing Grant away, Oliver and Cheryl Lang strongly imply that they will move again to another city to plan their next terrorist strike as well as look for another fall guy to take the blame for their group's actions as they did with Michael Faraday and many others before him.
