Subject: Review: X-Files (1998)

From: Steve Rhodes <[email-masked]>
Date: 20 Jul 1998 05:18:31 GMT

THE X FILES
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 1998 Steve Rhodes

RATING (0 TO ****):  ** 1/2

     How thick do you like your intrigue?  How much ambiguity can you
stand?  When you think of conspiratorial government agencies, do you
reject the easy targets like the CIA and focus instead on more sinister
ones like FEMA?  And finally, how successful are you at suspending
disbelief for two solid hours?

     Welcome to THE X FILES - the movie version.

     Since reviews of this movie demand that the critic state his or
her relative familiarity with the television series upon which the
movie is based, let me confess up-front that I have seen only one
episode.  In the Museum of Radio and Television in New York - a
must-see attraction - I watched an early episode as a research project
before seeing the movie.  The television show was more cerebral and
less dependent on gore and special effects than the film, but they were
both confusingly complex by design.

     Starting in North Texas, where I was born, the story opens in an
ice age in 35,000 B.C. with two cave men discovering a frozen alien.
The story quickly jumps ahead to the present where FBI agents Fox
Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) have been
reassigned to investigate terrorist bombings since the X-Files
investigation has been closed.

     Duchovny, whose "gift" as an actor is that his face is always a
blank slate, appears at one point to be trying to stare down a large
bomb set to explode.  It eventually goes off so that director Rob
Bowman can make the film into a big budget action picture as required
for a summer release.  And why was the skyscraper completely
demolished?  To get rid of some already dead bodies.  Why these bodies
were not disposed of in a thousand easier ways is one of many illogical
questions that a normal viewer, as opposed to a die-hard fan, might
want to ask.

     "I have a hunch that whatever you find can't be categorized or
easily referenced," Mulder says more than once to his sidekick, Scully.
Actually, the entire story fits under those rubrics.  Although the plot
may be impenetrable for non-fans, the movie from beginning to end is
absolutely fascinating even if not very often interesting.  The
labyrinthine plot got so outlandish at times that our audience started
laughing at it.

     The setup involves a killer virus, an alien civilization, human
conspirators, and an OB/GYN named Dr. Alvin Kurtzweil (Martin Landau),
who has cracked part of the vast mystery.  ("You told me you had the
answers," complains an angry Mulder.  "I don't have them all," replies
Dr. Kurtzweil.  Actually, even the entire Library of Congress couldn't
hold all of them.)

     A typical scene has a dark limo on a black night with an evil man
in a dark suit kidnapping Mulder for obscure reasons.  Periodically,
spooky creatures turn up to spice things up, and the movie becomes
ALIENS-lite.

     Among the many joys of the film is that we are able to deduce that
Hertz must have a rent-a-tractor outlet in Antarctica.  You can check
one out without a reservation and go joy riding alone across the vast
frozen landscape.  And when you get tired of driving, you can try your
hand at spelunking.

     At the end of the credits, we learn that the story was all
fiction.  Or so they want us to believe.

     THE X FILES runs 2:01.  It is rated PG-13 for violence and gore
and would be fine for kids 11 and up.