| Playing God | | Cast : | David Duchovny, Timothy Hutton, Angelina Jolie, Michael Massee, Peter Stormare | | Director : | Andy Wilson (IV) | | Studio : | Walt Disney Video | | Format : | Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, Letterboxed, Widescreen, NTSC | | Released Date : | October 17, 1997 | | DVD Released Date : | June 17, 1998 | | Language : | English (Original Language) | | Audience Rating : | R (Restricted) | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | February 21, 2007 | | Summary | An Enjoyable "B" | Content
 | While it isn't the most impressive movie, Playing God does have its moments. When I first saw it, I laughed out loud at a pairing of David Duchovney and Angelina Jolie, but after the third veiwing, the characters and the story began to grow on me. Duchovny and Jolie's chemistry actually works, and Timothy Hutton is crazy, colorful and quotable as a slightly sadistic crime lord. You'll get the gist of the story from previous reviews, but the important thing with this movie is to watch it tongue-in-cheek. It's entertaining, has a certain replay value, and has enough plot holes/unbelieveable happenings/goofy dialogue to warrent a double-play, and in my case, extensive nerd-ish study. What I've gleaned from the story and the character is basically: What goes around comes around. If you like enjoyable, well-meaning cheese, check this one out! |
| Rating | | | Date | July 23, 2006 | | Summary | "A leads to B leads to C..." | Content
| Playing God was a bit of a disappointment, considering the makeup of the cast: David Duchovny, Angelina Jolie, and Peter Stormare among others, though by no means is it a bad movie.
A down-on-his-luck doctor finds himself in the company of a psychopath criminal patching up people that need to be shielded from the police...
In short, the acting is pretty good (though nothing great), the setting is average, while the dialogues and the plot are way below average.
The major setbacks are in relation to:
1) The weak plot and especially the weak dialogues, for which the writers are to blame.
2) With the exception of David Duchovny and Angelina Jolie, everyone else was sad, especially Timothy Hutton and Michael Massee who were pathetic. Just as bad were the actors playing the minor roles.
3) David Duchovny, Angelina Jolie, and Peter Stormare (who was great in Constantine) were given terrible lines. What a waste of an AMAZING cast!
It seems as though the actors/directors/producers got together for some drinks, and then decided, on the spot, to make a quick and easy impromptu film for some extra cash/spending money.
Though the potential for a good movie was definitely there it fails to take off, primarily (but not exclusively) due to the writers.
In a nutshell, it's an ok movie and that's about it; no masterpiece here... Wait till they show it on TV.
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| Rating | | | Date | March 26, 2006 | | Summary | Huh... | Content
| What can you get with a good script, good acting, good casting, poor editing, poor original music composition, and so-so direction? The answer: a film like this. The composer is channeling some of the worst b-movie concepts in the history of the last few decades here. There's a scene where Jolie gets shot that is so badly edited, directed, and scored you'll actually think it's intentionally botched...but I highly doubt it. Someone criticized the Director of Photography, but I didn't see any indication of incompetence in that regard here. The angles and shots you see in the final film are the fault of the director and the editor. They're not poorly lit or underexposed, and the principles look fine. The sets were also not bad, either. I would say it was likely the script that appealed to the actors and, in all honesty, how bad could some Hollywood professionals mess up a concept like this? A lot, it turns out. On the plus side, Jolie is at her most photogenic in this. You're only 21 once, after all. It's unfortunate they got rid of the romance between the doctor and her, both for the skin potential and to add more weight to the conflict at the end. In all likelihood the producers of this film simply got lucky when they happened to hire one really good casting director. |
| Rating | | | Date | October 03, 2005 | | Summary | no dvd in case! | Content
| The case came in great condition but there was NO DVD inside. please help! please send the DVD. |
| Rating | | | Date | July 20, 2005 | | Summary | Hell does not always look like hell--on a good day it can look a lot like LA | Content
| Boy howdy! It's Perfessor Mom Pressfour, here to tell you about *Playing God* (1997). This is a fast-paced LA crime thriller that owes a debt to the great film noirs of the 1940s. It stars David Duchovny as Eugene, Timothy Hutton as Raymond, Angelina Jolie as Claire, Michael Massee as Gage, Peter Stormare as Vladimir, Andrew Tiernan as Cyril and Gary Dourdan as Yates.
In 1997, after 3 years of playing FBI agent Fox Mulder in TV's *X-Files*, David Duchovny took time off to make *Playing God*. Cast in the lead role, he was a drug-addicted surgeon disbarred from medical practice. In 1996 Timothy Hutton played an LA bank robber alongside Harvey Keitel in a gritty neo-noir called *City of Industry*. For the *Playing God* production, Hutton's criminal status was upped: now, in the supporting role, he was an LA underworld boss. Angelina Jolie, still a newcomer to the business, was on her way to stardom. Her part as the Hutton character's moll marks the point where the mainstream media started paying attention to her career.
Some behind-the-scenes tidbits: though she was teamed with Duchovny, Jolie never watched *X-Files*--which at that time, of course, was one of the top TV series in the world. Nontheless Duchovny was impressed by the young actress's professionalism. It's been rumored that Timothy Hutton and Ms Jolie became an item during the filming. As far as I know neither one ever made a public comment about the relationship, if there really was one.
A word about the acting. David Duchovny isn't one of my favorites. I wouldn't go so far as to say that in *Playing God* he turned in a wooden performance; it's just that, for an actor, his face isn't the most expressive. It's an asset if you're playing an FBI agent. That job calls for being cagey about what you're thinking. But as Eugene, the doctor fallen from grace, Duchovny is supposed to convince us he's this brilliant, sensitive but tortured soul who, between periodic heroin swoons, ponders the meaning of existence. About Hutton, he did very well in *City of Industry* as a small-time stickup man. In *Playing God* he's supposed to be Raymond Blossom, the head of a multi-million-dollar copy-violations enterprise who runs with a team of professional killers. Hutton just doesn't seem sinister enough for this. Maybe he should have traded roles with Michael Massee, who plays the FBI agent trying to bring Raymond down. Massee turns in a good performance, but for a cop he seems a trifle too oily. Then there's Angelina Jolie as Claire, Raymond's squeeze. It's the kind of part she excels at--an ultracool vamp, dangerous yet born with a good heart. Some moral confusion we never learn about has Claire consorting with evil. Is she evil herself? Even Claire doesn't know. Anyway, she's almost always dressed like a fashion model and the camera loves her for it.
Claire: (shouting from the front bleachers at a Laker's basketball game) "Take it to the hole!"
Raymond: "Oh baby, I love it when you talk dirty."
Ms Jolie said herself that Claire was one of her favorite early characters. Trouble is, 1997 was a little TOO early for Hollywood's bigwigs to grant Jolie the screen time she needed to develop Claire to where we feel we really know her. Right up to the end she's just a dark, dreamily beautiful cypher. ("I don't know what I've been," is all Claire admits to Eugene,) A few years later Claire returned to the screen in another incarnation, as Julia/Bonny in *Original Sin* (2000). Just as Claire is torn between a flawed good man (Eugene) and a suave bad man (Hutton), Julia/Bonny is torn between Luis and Billy. Having "arrived" as an A-list actress, Jolie was able in *Original Sin* to fully flesh out this conflicted persona.
Some reviewers dismiss *Playing God* as a lame and forgettable gangster flick. To me it's a little gem. As I said at the start, it owes a debt to such dark 1940s film noir classics as *Double Indemnity* and *The Big Sleep*. For example, there's the philosophical voice-over narration. At various points in the film Eugene speaks offscreen to the viewer. He shares his thoughts about the chain of events in his life. How those events brought down an apparently good man. So how do life events, good and bad, come to be? Eugene believes they are caused by a person's own choices. "Each life is made up of big decisions, and each day is made up of a million little decisions...all these seemingly inconsequential choices might change your life forever. But who can handle that kind of responsibility? It would paralyze you to think about it." So rather than try to figure out with logic where your life is going, you have to trust your instincts, what the ancient Greek philosophers called character. "You better pray to whatever God you believe in that your character knows what the hell it's doing."
This is precisely where Eugene gets into trouble. Instead of praying to God he plays God. (Hence the movie's title.) God has authority over life and death. A medical doctor is authorized to share in that divine authority. For example he is authorized to use poisons (medicines and anaesthetics) and weapons (scalpels) on people, to give them back their lives...or in some cases to take their lives away. Just like God. But Eugene's authority was revoked. Criminal boss Raymond sympathetically steps up to take Eugene under his wing and make him an underworld doctor for gun-shot gangsters. Underworld doctors don't report gunshot wounds to the police. That's against the law. It's likewise against the law to practice medicine after your license is taken away. By choosing to break the law Eugene becomes a criminal, someone who "plays God" without authority.
"It's a choice that's been offered to many men," Eugene tells us, "to be a slave in heaven or a star in hell. Of course I knew this was wrong. But I'd been a surgeon. On a big day, that can be like flying an F-14 when you are the pilot AND the plane. I missed that. And hell does not always look like hell. On a good day it can look a lot like LA."
Still, Eugene isn't comfortable as the star surgeon of LA's underworld hell. He can't quite bring himself to do as Raymond urges him: "Embrace your criminal self!" Claire senses this: "Maybe he doesn't have a criminal self."
Yet it was Claire who first told Raymond about Eugene. One night she'd been sitting with some friends in a gangster nightclub. Eugene came in to score drugs. Suddenly there was a shootout that left Isaac, one of Claire's companions, on the floor with a few bullets in his chest. Using barroom ingredients, Eugene performed a makeshift operation that saved the guy's life. Claire was very impressed. Later that night, after Eugene had left, Raymond was likewise very impressed to hear about Eugene from Claire. Especially since Isaac is one of Raymond's men.
It's interesting to analyze the dynamics of the triangle. Claire's attitude is that Eugene ought to be paid well for his services as a mob doctor. But Raymond should not bring him into the inner circle where he will be party to Ray's criminal plans and secrets. She disapproves of Eugene's addiction and thinks him untrustworthy. Raymond, for his part, is fascinated by Eugene. You get the impression that Raymond sees himself as an intelligent guy who's sick and tired of being around lowbrows all the time. Witness the way he reacts to Vladimir (Peter Stormare), his Russian partner in crime. Vladimir accuses Raymond, "You wanna cut us off? Dump us in the lurch, or what?" With a sigh Raymond corrects Vladimir's usage: "It's 'in the ditch.' The expression is, 'in the ditch.'" Vladimir snarls back, "I don't care about any F*CKING expression, you got it?" Raymond's face just registers weary exasperation. He's thinking, "Why do I have to be around idiots like this?" That's the key to his enthusiasm for Eugene. Raymond so identifies with his educated new friend that he gushes, "I would have been a GREAT doctor." Eugene, of course, likes Raymond for giving him a chance to be a surgeon once more. Plus Eugene is interested in Claire.
Claire, apparently, is dismissive of Eugene: "You must be somebody who's always on the lookout for a new way to f*ck up." (Great line!) And she's always cautioning Raymond: "Be careful. Don't talk too much." When he answers that this is Eugene he's talking to, who's every bit as much an outlaw as we are, baby, she sarcastically asks, "I'm sorry, is Eugene a full partner now?" But it isn't as simple as it seems. Actually it's Claire who wears the wire for the FBI. Everything Raymond shares with HER is evidence. She's pushing Eugene away because she doesn't want him to go down with Raymond when the bust comes.
Raymond finally kills Vladimir. In a cold rage Vladimir's boss Dimitri invades Raymond's pad and starts shooting. Claire takes a bullet in the chest. Trying to save her, Eugene finds the wire. The corners of the triangle shift. Eugene flees with helpless, bleeding Claire to a country hideaway. On the way he performs another barroom operation to remove the bullet. At last Eugene and Claire are shed of Raymond. They look out for one another--he tends her wound, she's there for him while he kicks his habit. But they can't dodge the FBI for long. Gage, the agent who is determined to bust Raymond, has plans for them. Raymond does too.
*Playing God* winds up with a car chase through the streets of LA that culminates in a final showdown in the middle of a highway. But this typical-of-Hollywood action ending is not as gripping as the thickening atmosphere of suspense that leads up to it. With a story that fires the mind, a snappy soundtrack, and tight editing, *Playing God* is never boring. Duchovny and Hutton, though adequate, do not tap the full potential of their roles. Jolie is outstanding. For me, her performance as Claire is one of her best.
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