# X Files, The (1998)

### reviewed by
Steve Rhodes

    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.

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