Subject: Review: The X-Files (1998)

From: "Harvey S. Karten" <[email-masked]>
Date: 29 Jun 1998 04:28:08 GMT

THE X-FILES: FIGHT THE FUTURE
 By Harvey Karten, Ph.D.
 20 Century Fox/ Ten Thirteen Production
 Director:  Rob Bowman
 Writer:  Chris Carter
 Cast: David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson, Martin Landau,
John Neville, Mitch Pileggi, William B. Davis, Blythe Danner,
Armin Mueller-Stahl

   I had never seen an episode of the super successful "The
advantage--sort of like the guy who goes to "The Truman
Show" before seeing a trailer or commercial and is as much
in the dark as the title character.  I did, however, zip through
one of the sci-fi novels based on the series, written by
Kevin J. Anderson, "The X-Files: Ground Zero," enough to
know that an X-file is an FBI document which details a
strange incident, one which the FBI does not really want
solved. "Ground Zero" is about a nuclear weapons researcher
who is burned to a cinder when he opens a special delivery
package with a Honolulu postmark and finds a box of
mysterious black powder inside.  How dumb can a brilliant
scientist be to open a box which does not have clearance and
gets through a high-security zone?  The scientists in the
movie "The X-Files: Fight the Future," are not so dumb at all:
in fact they are using the information they have for a global
conspiracy to  gain emergency powers not enjoyed by any
U.S. president since the lesser-known Truman.  In doing so,
however, they become part of a plot that is ever more
complicated than the supernatural--but quite accessible--
"Ground Zero."

   Though "The X-Files" has already enjoyed a five-year run
on TV where it rose to the number one spot in Canada, there
is a place for a yet another version: on the big screen.  Given
the high-tech accoutrements and the exotic, James-Bond-like
locations, the story can exploit its advantages , particularly
since "The X-Files: Fight the Future" hops the globe from
Washington to Bethesda, from England to Antarctica, from
Tunisia to Dallas.  The focus of this and all other X-files
narratives is on two FBI agents, Fox Mulder (David Duchovny)
and his partner, Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson).  The two
agents have (pardon the oxymoron) a platonic chemistry,
willing to do anything to continue working together but never
developing an intimate relationship.  At one point, though,
Chris Carter--who created the eminent TV series on
September 10, 1993 and who has written the screenplay--puts
a romantic spark into the team who are about to kiss (to the
disbelieving gasps of the audience) when a busy-bee
schedule prompts them to drop this bit of whimsy.  Regulars
to the series know that the two are distinct opposites in one
way: Mulder, having once witnessed the abduction of his
sisters by extraterrestrials, believes in supernatural answers to
unexplained incidents; Scully, who gave up a medical practice
for the more exciting career of special agent, is a strict
rationalist who subjects every such occurrence to the
demands of science.

   The film opens in northern Texas in 35,000 B.C. as a
couple of fire-bearing aborigines who don't look at all like
Native Americans explore a cave only to find that they have
activated a deadly, long-buried force.  Since the state did not
have capital punishment to threaten criminals at the time, a
couple of murders result.  Cut to the present- day area in the
American southwest and we find a 12-year-old in similar
trouble for letting his curiosity run wild in a crevice near his
home.  When the dead lad mysteriously disappears only to be
found later, a victim this time of a terrorist bomb in a Dallas
federal building, agents Mulder and Scully pursue the case
until they begin messing around with what some
agencies of the U.S. government do not want the public to
know.  Mulder and Scully are caught on the one hand by a
bureau's need to use them as scapegoats and on the other
by a mysterious cabal of cryptic characters.  These individuals
include an OB-GYN physician who knows too much (Martin
Landau); a classy British dude known throughout the series
as The Well-Manicured Man (John Neville); a high-level
government investigator, Cassidy (Blythe Danner); and 
Strughold, (Armin Mueller-Stahl) whose European accent
signals us that he must be one of the bad guys.

   Turning up regularly at the headquarters of the conspirators
gives the agents the opportunity to save each other's lives
from time to time, though we wonder how agent Mulder was
able to arrange transportation from Washington to the
Antarctic given that the FBI wants to stop him.  "The X-Files:
Fight the Future" has a good deal of humor provided by the
conspiracy-fighting partners but does not try to be campy
despite the many opportunities for director Rob Bowman to
steer the narrative in that direction.  The big screen is
well-utilized by the special effects people of Amalgamated
Dynamics, a company in the business of scaring us by
showing the horrific disfigurement that a lowly virus can
cause, the effects of fire on cave walls, and a couple of
stylized scenes involving the violent murder of good citizens
by creatures imprisoned in giant cakes of ice.  

   According to some high-school kids who are groupies of the
five-year-old series, Chris Carter has done everything to keep
his plot under wraps until the picture opens, like a Woody
Allen or a final-show Seinfeld who uses such secrecy to drum
up a larger potential audience.  Carter throws a lot of details
at us during the two-hour sci-fi fantasy, but his need to set us
up for sequels is so strong that nothing is finally resolved.  In
fact, the audience might be hard-put to figure out what's going
on, since editor Stephen Mark's rapid cutting away of Ward
Russell's impressive images ends each scene just at the
point of explanation. Chris Carter has succeeded so well in
keeping the plot under wraps that even after you watch the
imposing imagery, you leave the theater wondering who's
conspiring against whom for what purpose.

Rated PG-13.  Running Time: 120 minutes.  (C) 1997
Harvey Karten