Well special agent Melvin Frohike, a close personal friend of Agent Mulder's. Melvin managed to use his friendship to score a pass to see PLAYING GOD. Which I loved a trailer for a few months back, and I've had people writing me about. Do note, this was a test screening and the opinion of a single person. So take that as you will. There are some spoilers in here.
I was all set for a balls-out/good to the last spoiler review of Playing God for you and yours, but as I sat down to start it, and got a few hundred words out, I realized that since I saw the film last Thursday, I had forgotten a lot of the nittygritty specifics. Luckily for you, and unluckily for Disney, I'm going to give it a shot anyway.
If you need to tell the AICN'ers out there something that summarizes Bobo's very first review, tell them that Mulder couldn't have saved this one even if he had Scully working overtime with him. (lame, I know...but I have an excuse..read on)
I have never seen X-files. Really. Not one episode, not even 5 minutes worth, so I was completely unbiased going into this flick. I didn't even know if DD played Mulder or Scully. But now I know one thing...hot damn, this movie pretty much eats it! DD plays a drug addicted (downers) ex-surgeon (stripped of his license after wigging out in the OR and botching a routine procedure) who is hired by bootlegger/counterfeit merchandise guy Timothy Hutton as a private doctor to do clandestine surgery on hoods who get messed up but can't go to a hospital for obvious reasons. Without going into detail (simply because I can't really remember total specific stuff) DD ends up caught between Hutton, the Russian mob (for a little while) and the FBI in what was supposed to be (and is probably being marketed as) a neo-noir thriller. Sorry, but that's not the case.
I didn't totally hate this movie. The first half, while cheesy, held my interest. But oof aahh...things got bad quickly. Hutton plays his character totally over the top while DD barely moves a facial muscle. Neither really get the job done. They end up facing off and hunting each other down over a girl: Hutton knows her as his main lady, DD finds out she's an FBI informant. Lame, over acted characters pop up and disappear and pop up again and the movie never really makes up it's mind about what it wants to be. Toss in really implausible situations, a car chase out of nowhere and a twist of fate ending that doesn't work and you've got yourself a genuine USA network movie on the bigscreen. File this one under X for "extraordinarily mediocre at best"
Save your green for Boogie Nights. That's where it's at. And I'm out....
