The X-Files: I Want To Believe

Category: Film
Genre: Suspense / Sci-fi / Thriller
Directed By: Chris Carter
Running Time: 104 min.

I’m beginning to understand the dichotomy of how certain Star Wars fans feel about Lucas’s modern works after having seen X-Files: I Want To Believe. While a competent effort, the film was almost wholly lacking in the elements that first attracted me to the series and the first film (1998’s X-Files: Fight The Future).

What I enjoyed about the early part of the series and the first movie was peeking into the working of the big conspiracy machine, seeing the strings pulled and catching shadows of those doing the pulling. The recent film on the other hand avoids that path almost entirely, which is both a conscious decision on the creators part and likely a reflection of the times.

Some of the redeeming factors of the film include the exploration of Mulder and Scully’s relationship after all that they have been through. The likability of both character and the actors portraying them (Duchovny and Anderson, respectively) is really what manages to carry the movie as far as it gets. Sadly, that is not all the way to the finish line.

I left the theater with the distinct impression that I’d sat through a nearly two hour episode, and not from one of the best seasons to boot. In the final analysis I may simply be on a different page than the film’s creators, enamored with teh same concept vehicle, but very much of differing opinions on where to go with it.

Rating: 4/10

Hancock

Category: Film
Genre: Action / Superhero / Comedy
Directed By: Peter Berg
Running Time: 92 min.

Hancock looked like an interesting concept, a fully realized anti-hero. As it turns out, Hancock tries to do more than that, and breaks the format in the process. The Hancock character is well put together at the outset, allowing us to sublimate our vicarious desires to have super powers, but not act particularly super. As it progresses, the film manages to work up to a heartful Jerry Macguire feel, and we buy into it.

Its at about this point where it drifts off into unstable territories, heavy handedly dropping in a sizeable plot/origin device with no framework for acceptance. The force driving the action in the film changes gears, and the audience begins to feel like an appendage to the storytelling, which has taken on the flavor of a writer trying to express… something.

All in all Hancock’s Achilles heel comes form trying to do two very different things in the same movie, and this strains one’s investment in suspended disbelief past the breaking point. Putting heart into a film is great, but it has to come organically from the characters, and the back story material for the main cast seems more like nametags than foundational character motivationt.

If Hancock had simply remained a film with the killer app of the anti-superhero, deeper origins not required, it would have been a fun ride. As it stands, the midrange shift in the storytelling feels much like a product of early writing workshops, with a point the writer is desperate to tell, but just can’t seem to stretch the characters around to lend it credibility.

Rating:4/10