The X-Files: Fight the Future Review
by "Harvey S. Karten" (film_critic AT compuserve DOT com)June 29th, 1998
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
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