Brincando com a Morte

I enjoyed this movie. Unlike like some of the pumped up, steroid trash that is passed off as action movies, Playing God is simple and realistic, with characters that are believable, action that is not over the top and enough twists and turns to keep you interested until the end.

Well directed, well acted and a good story.

Smart, funny script with interesting original premise of the doctor forced to work for criminals. The movie wanders, though, as there's no real central plotline. Great dialogue, but maybe the subsidiary characters are more interesting than the main characters. Script is dramatic/comedic; movie is played down, but the choice to do so seems to have robbed the movie of much-needed juice. The stakes don't seem to be too high for any character. Direction is competent, but doesn't match the script. Hutton is scary, but doesn't have much to do except act scary. Duchovny is fine, but I think he was cast mostly for his X-Files fame at the time. He's not exactly the most charismatic lead actor.

Don't analyse the plot if you can help it. Boring, it is not.

It's unusual to find a movie that seeks to entertain within a self-imposed time constraint and this one has a few memorable one-liners to take away. That, alone, makes this worth seeing.

In case you're wondering, I'm not a Duchovny 'fan'. A Timothy Hutton fan...? Well, it was a show-stealing performance...

Okay, truthfully, I saw the previews for this movie and thought to myself, what are the producers thinking? Hutton, Jolie, and DUCHOVNY? How could the monotoned actor possibly compete with Jolie's natural power on the screen? But surprisingly, the two had the kind of chemistry that showed intense caring without a kiss. Even David's humor matched up to Jolie's spark and fire. As for Hutton, he played the psycho very well, contrasting with David's calm delivery of life threatening situations. Overall, I was very impressed with the writing and character development. I gave it 8 stars.

Hollywood possesses the penchant for remaking old classic films, such as Gus Van Sant's re-working of Hitchcock's Psycho. Here's an idea: instead of remaking GOOD movies, why don't we remake bad ones, and try to improve them? In such a world, I would nominate "Playing God" for a treatment. The premise is interesting, and the script, although at times uneven, has moments of poetic lyricism and some nice touches. So . . . what happened? The finger must be pointed at the performances, which fail to capture the essence of the screenplay. David Duchovny is cast against type as a drug-addled ex-physician, and Timothy Hutton's portrayal of gangster Raymond Blossom borders on the plane of villainy and its cariacture. Duchovny, whose deadpan delivery and solemn glances work fine in the X-Files, must realize that the role he's playing here is NOT Fox Mulder, but a much more unsympathetic character. Grade: C