The X-Files: Fight the Future Review
by "Mark O'Hara" (mwohara AT hotmail DOT com)July 8th, 1998
Dear Steve --
Steve Kong at the Hard Boiled movie page gave me your address. I'm hoping to get reviews indexed through rec. arts. and IMDb.
Could you tell me the requirements (format, etc)?
Don't know if background is necessary, but I teach high school English and (as an adjunct) freshman English at Miami of Ohio. I've been publishing stories, poems and essays in lit mags since 1981. Went to Glassboro State College (in NJ) and Miami University.
I'm enclosing a review for your review. Look forward to hearing from you. Thanks very much for reading! Hope it's OK I sent this to you at two addresses.
--Mark O'Hara
The X Files (1998)
Although the first shots of THE X FILES are corny (c'mon, a location title that reads "North Texas, 35,000 B.C."?), director Rob Bowman shows solid work in most other aspects of the film.
One likable side of the film is acting. Perhaps because I have seen probably half a season's worth of shows throughout the run of the series, I was not used to David Duchovny's deadpan looks. I enjoyed his character's own reference to this stoicism, and soon got used to Fox Mulder's tendency to display emotion through actions rather than facial expressions. Conversely, Gillian Anderson's Dana Scully -- though governed by cold logic -- often seems more emotionally reactive. A certain glossiness about her looks in the film bothered me, the gloss extending to her eyes, as though she experienced discomfort with contacts or with tears of frustration about to spill at any second. Applause to the director and make-up people, who give Scully's cheeks broken blood vessels late in the film, after an ordeal that surely would have caused them. On the whole, Mulder and Scully exploit well their level of comfort, after several years of interacting.
Layers of conspiracy lie at the center of the plot, and the aging white males cast as the conspirators turn in believable if humorless performances. Armin Mueller-Stahl, apparently the highest-ranking conspirator (operating beyond the ken and control of the FBI), does not get a great deal of screen time. But he is very good at using his scowl and his accent to portray a sinister secrecy. Martin Landau plays Dr. Alvin Kurtzweil, who is himself the victim of conspiracies - attempts to frame him and, no doubt, discredit his way-out-there writings. Kurtzweil has to scramble to convince even Mulder of his credibility. To me, the most incredible side of Landau's character is his wandering the dark alleys, unarmed, wanted by at least the local police, behind the bar in which he meets Mulder. The "cigarette-smoking man" plays the main heavy here -- besides the aliens themselves. What confuses me about his motivation is that, despite countless reasons to rub out Mulder, he and his secret agency keep letting the tireless G-man get away.
The sets and special effects are grand in THE X FILES. "Grand" in the old meaning of the word -- full of wonder and modesty, like the behavior of an honorable person. I did find the bomb-sheared office building tacky -- too close to a re-enactment of Oklahoma City. But other catastrophes, afflictions and icky creatures find their ways seamlessly into the narrative. The implosion of the tundra -given away too much in trailers - is a superb computer creation that is edited with both patience and skill. Remarkable illusions are created with the large sets and their gruesome inhabitants in subterranean Antarctica.
Mark Snow's music frequently lends suspense at the right places, though it seems a red-herring when the notes cut in as Mulder glances behind a soda machine that has cheated him out of his change. Some fast-paced pieces seem too densely New Age, layered as thickly as suspicions in viewers' minds.
The script, by Chris Carter and Frank Spotnitz, nicely sets alarms that go off later in the film at crucial times, including a joke from Scully just after she is resuscitated by Mulder. In a way that I don't believe would insult die-hard fans of the series, we are informed about the backgrounds, quirks and quests of the main characters. Just from the hype surrounding the movie I learned enough -- Scully's return to faith, for instance - to help me chip away at plot twists.
I would rate THE X FILES as a satisfying and intelligent story, though it should not be mistaken for an important film. A question I have for SEQUEL?
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