The X-Files: I Want To Believe

The X-Files: I Want To Believe has to be one of the silliest thrillers in years.  It is serious all the way through, but when the end gets there, all bets are off; You may just find yourself laughing.

It begins with the before and after of a crime scene, showing simultaneously the victim as she is abducted and a group of FBI men as they follow a psychic across a frozen lake, where he eventually discovers, buried in the snow, a severed arm.  Eventually we find out it is not the victim's arm, but the arm of one of her abductors.  And it only gets weirder from there.

Former FBI agent Dana Scully (played by Gillian Anderson) is now an acting surgeon in a hospital in Virginia walking the moral high wire with her latest patient - a little boy with a terminal bone marrow deficiency who she believes she can save using an experimental, and very painful and risky, stem cell implant, although she will be going against the wishes of the boy's priest and parents, who think his life should be left in the hands of God.  Yes, this is heady stuff.

Scully is soon recruited by FBI Agent Drummy (played by Xzibit - fulfilling the new requirement in Hollywood that at least one former rap star be cast in every film in a non-rap oriented roll) to locate reclusive former FBI agent Fox Mulder (played by David Duchovny).  She doesn't have far to go, seeing as how they live together.  

The FBI wants Mulder on the case.  It seems the woman who was abducted is an FBI agent, and the psychic who led them to the severed arm claims she is still alive.  This psychic is an unkempt old man, a former priest, and a pedophile convicted of molesting 37 of his alter boys.  His name is Father Joseph Crissman (played by Billy Connolly), and when he is overcome with his psychic visions, he cries tears of blood.

Both Mulder and Scully are reluctant to cooperate.  They have left their pasts safely behind them, and they have moved on with their lives.  Well, actually when Mulder is introduced, he is holed up in his study with a month long beard, pencils stuck in the ceiling from boredom, and conspiracy theory newspaper clippings lining the walls.  But he's still reluctant to help.  Or to shave.  Luckily for them, this abduction took place in the snow-swamped mountains of Virginia, and they can still drive home at night.

I Want To Believe is a competent X-Files episode, but that's what it should have been - an episode.  After awhile, it feels like a broken record.  Both Scully and Mulder keep talking themselves out of doing things - they believe because of this, they don't believe because of that, they're no longer FBI agents so this doesn't have anything to do with them, they can't get mixed up in this anymore.  Blah, blah, blah - that's what I started to hear after the third repetition - blah, blah, blah.  First Mulder tries to talk Scully into it, then when she's into it, he tries to talk her out.

Neither of them believes Father Joseph is telling the truth - they suspect, as does the FBI, that he had something to do with the abduction and the planting of the severed limb.  I guess it's hard to believe someone when they've been branded a pedophile.  Or when they claim to be psychic.  But the whole crying tears of blood thing - that would get to me.

The case gets more complicated when another woman is abducted, and Mulder and Scully discover that both of the women attended the same swimming facility, and both have the same rare blood type.  Mulder instantly deduces that what we have here is a black market organ smuggling ring, and that the women have been abducted for their kidneys or lungs or whatever.  He then suggests they track down and interrogate all registered organ transporters, and this leads to the revelation of the villain, a crafty Russian named Janke, who also drives a snow plow and cleverly uses it to run his victims off the road, to flip their cars down into ravines, and to clear the roads of the snow that is incessantly pooped on it throughout the movie.  I mean, are they sure this takes place in Virginia and not North Dakota or Alaska?  (To be fair, it was filmed in British Columbia.)

What all of this builds to I will leave for you to discover, but I will say that it has to do not so much with organ smuggling as body part smuggling, and that it descends to a level of absurd silliness in its climax, which takes place at one of those mad scientist's labs you used to see in old Frankenstein and Vincent Price movies, and that you now see in kid's cartoons that are making fun of Frankenstein and Vincent Price movies - you know, with vats of chemicals, and everything tinted green, and with vials and beakers and tubes filled with blood.  And it's way out in the middle of nowhere, covered in snow, with a bunch of rottweilers roaming around.  And the mad scientists are Russians.  Now, isn't that silly?

Let the silliness continue:  In a last minute turn of events, not only does Mulder pull himself out of an overturned car sunk in a bank of snow, but he happens to mosey right on by the mad scientist's lab.  Later, Scully and Assistant Director Walter Skinner (who must also live nearby, seeing as how he shows up out of the blue) just happen to drive down the same road and, based on a turn of phrase from Father Joe, Scully stops and searches a nearby group of mailboxes and finds mail from a medical supply company addressed to some Russian hyphenate.  Gee, they're lucky they drove down that road.  Come to think of it, maybe the Russian mad scientists made a mistake by building their lab out in the middle of nowhere instead of in a busy city.  But then they wouldn't have gotten to have rottweilers roaming around and a snow plow driver as their head thug and victim accumulator.

I'm still not sure I know, ultimately, what the bad guys were aiming at.  I'm pretty sure I could figure it out, I just don't want to.  And I could never tell you why they would be doing what they're doing in Virginia, and not, say, in Russia.  Well, I can tell you exactly why, and that is because if they were doing it in Russia, there would be no movie.  

There's so much more I want to tell you that will really make the film seem silly, but I don't want to spoil what fun there is.  And there is a lot of fun.  The film is thick-headed with talks of fate and God and the moral consequences of medical and societal decisions, but it is also a well-executed thriller that thinks instead of blowing things up.  I had a good time seeing Duchovny and Anderson fit like a glove back into their likenesses, and their smoldering romance is still tucked right beneath the surface where it should be, but it should have come out years ago, and it should have been forty-five minutes long, and there should have been commercials, and when it was over, I could have looked forward to another ridiculous installment next week instead of five years later.