Akte X: Der Film

The X-Files movie really is as good a big screen adaptation as you could possibly hope for.

It helps that it's entirely controlled by the people behind the series, and that the programme had cinematic qualities in the first place. On repeat viewings, however, the story is revealed to be thin, and lacking in incident. Its need to tie into events of the series makes it not wholly satisfying as a stand-alone vehicle, though it should still be understandable to those that have never seen an episode.

David Duchovny as Mulder seems surprisingly at ease in his limited way, while Martin Landau is good as far as plot devices go. Gillian Anderson is unfortunately encouraged to overstate her lines, particularly in the beginning, while a cameo by The Lone Gunmen is perhaps the only indulgence that would be lost on non-fans.

There are inevitable concessions to the cinema format, of course. Not the touted mild use of expletives, which happened from time to time on TV anyway. But the alien presence that mutates to owe a debt to Ridley Scott's Alien, or the near-kiss between the two leads. Thankfully, the first point actually makes a logical sense and carries the story forward. The second is something that was also long overdue, and silly that it took so long. For two people who obviously feel about each other the way Mulder and Scully do, to go five years without even kissing is stretching credulity.

Ultimately, though, it lacks any clear focus for a casual film audience, and flits repetitively from action sequence to sloppy exposition and back again throughout its duration. Creator Chris Carter, like Gene Roddenberry with Star Trek before him, is not the smoothest writer of his own series, though he does adequately most of the time. Worst example is the opening Mulder/Scully scene which is laughably trite, and there are plenty more examples of Carter's trademark purple prose. Yet it does have a beginning, middle and end, and can be watched back-to-back with a TV episode with no noticeable jumps in style. In that sense, then, it is a most successful big-screen adaptation of a television series.

Hard-core X-File fans will be inclined to award an extra mark to the total, then. But for a non-committal audience, this is a "6" as they would have no idea from watching this that the frail, fag-smoking pensioner is the series' major villain.

I've met a LOT of people who whine that this is just a two-hour episode with a big budget. I don't see how that's a complaint. I mean, if one of the best-written, best-directed, most atmospheric shows on television makes a movie-length episode that can stand on its own...what's the problem? That still makes it more intelligent than 90% of the movies put out this summer.

Rob Bowman(frequent TV series director) was chosen to direct this first feature film spun-off the popular TV series that stars David Duchovny & Gillian Anderson as Fox Mulder & Dana Scully, who are assigned to Texas on a bomb-threat detail that proves to be no hoax, and after investigating, it turns out to be connected to the ongoing syndicate conspiracy led by their nemesis the Smoking Man(played by William B. Davis) to cover up an alien virus related to the very aliens they had been searching for in the past five years. Martin Landau costars as Alvin Kurtzweil, a doctor who knows something of the incident. Plot climaxes in the Arctic, where Mulder must rescue a kidnapped Scully from a spaceship...Killer Bees also play a part. Good film fits in well with the series, and also works as a stand-alone tale. Exciting action scenes, and was nice to see these characters on the big screen.

Really just a big-scale version of a typical two-part episode though.

In 35,000 BC northern Texas, two men enter an ice cave to find shelter. They battle a mysterious creature. A black substance oozes from the creature and infects one of the men. In the present day, a boy falls into the cave and is infected by the black ooze. Firefighters climb in and are also attacked. One week later, the FBI is checking on a bomb threat in Dallas. Special Agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) go to the building across the street on a hunch. They find the bomb and barely escape. The pair is made the scapegoats. Alvin Kurtzweil (Martin Landau) tells Fox that FEMA has a secret isolation ward in the building. The boy and the firefighters are found in the rubble presumed to be killed by the blast.

Mulder and Scully's banter is back almost immediately. Everything that is beloved about the show is present in this movie. They are the outsiders. There is a conspiracy. There is something creepy. This is what true fans of the show love. For non-fans, this can be a bit of a climb to understand everything.

Well-paced and well-crafted, "The X-Files" is a surprisingly good movie that does not try to get cute and go away from the things that made the series such a national phenomenon. David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson seem out of place working with bomb squads and doing other mundane duties after their department is shut down by the government. However the two feel that something really major is up which involves alien colonization on Earth and a vast government cover-up that goes through the highest places in the U.S. political realm. A good screenplay and solid direction make "The X-Files" a first-rate film from a very good cinematic year. 4 stars out of 5.