David Duchovny: Playing God - Movie

Playing God
Cast :	David Duchovny, Timothy Hutton
Director :	Andy Wilson (IV)
Studio :	Touchstone Video
Format :	Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen
Released Date :	October 17, 1997
DVD Released Date :	May 06, 2003
Language :	English (Dubbed), English (Subtitled), English (Original Language)
Audience Rating :	R (Restricted)
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Customer Reviews

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 FCKING 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 fck 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.

Rating
Date	April 16, 2005
Summary	David Duchovny takes Angelina Jolie away from Timothy Hutton
Content	I think the best way to describe "Playing God," the film that David Duchovny did during his summer off from "The X-Files" in 1977, is that the actor tried playing the self-destructive character who is the protagonist of the film and then reached a point where he decided it was better to have fun with the role. What follows could not be considered to be too little, but it really does come too late for director Andy Wilson's film to really work. The premise is certainly interesting enough. Dr. Eugene Sands (David Duchovny) is a defrocked doctor who lost his license to practice medicine when he tried performing surgery drugged out of his mind and killed a patient. Down in the depths of despair Sands is out trying to score some heroin in a bar where bad things happen when something bad happens and one of the customers is blown away. Sands offers the sage medical advice that 911 should be called, but it seems that would actually be a bad thing so he ends up doing a MacGuyver-style version of meatball surgery to save the guy. Two interesting things happen as a result of this incident. The first is that Sands remembers that being a doctor was an even bigger rush than what he got from drugs. The second is that Raymond Blossom (Timothy Hutton), who has lots of ill-gotten gain, arranges a meeting with Sands and gives him $10,000. This is a way for Blossom to say thanks for saving his friend but it is also an invitation for Sands to be a doctor again. He will not have a license, but he will get to practice medicine and on some rather interesting patients while some even more interesting interested parties look on. Complicating the offer is Gage (Michael Massee), an F.B.I. agent who knows about the deal that Blossom is giving Sands and wants to use that information to force little fish Sands to give him big fish Blossom. Then there is Claire (Angelina Jolie), Blossom's mistress, who pouts at Sands in a provocative way. But since Blossom is the sort of person who pays Sands to bring back someone from the dead just so they can be killed, trying to take Claire away from him is not going to be a good idea. Of course, Sands will try. The best and worst scenes in this movie are a pair of surgery scenes that show that Duchovny's instincts on how to play the part are at odds with the initial drama. The worst is when we flashback to see the botched surgery that cost Sands his license. Show me just this clip and I would pass on seeing the movie. The best is when Sands has to do another impromptu surgery, this time in a biker bar. The setting, the characters, and the performances really work, but they run against the grain of the entire set up of the film. But it represents the part of the film where Duchovny finally finds a way of making the character work. The only thing wrong with this is that the wisecracking Sands does not really flow from the situation. Actually I rounded down on this one because I thought Timothy Hutton's over the top villain was too over the top. I liked his coldly calculating moments a lot better than his ranting and raving madman moments, but it is the latter that comes to dominate the end of the film. The climax tries to speak at some sort of friendship between the two that makes what has come to pass somewhat ironic, but no such relationship was really established here. Ultimately, Duchovny gets more of this film than the audience, because "Playing God" clearly teaches him where his strengths as an actor lie in making movies. He has such an easy-going charm and wry sense of humor that you hope for his wife's sake he is not really acting. In his follow up theatrical efforts, "Return to Me," "Evolution" and "Connie and Carla" he clearly plays to his strong suits. Unfortunately the limited release yesterday of "House of D," written and directed by Duchovny, did not open here in the Zenith City. I was really looking forward to seeing that flm as his next big move in his career.

Rating
Date	March 20, 2005
Summary	David Duchovny all the way...
Content	The redeeming factor is that I got to look at Mr. Duchovny. Yummy! :)

Rating
Date	August 29, 2003
Summary	A very enjoyable movie
Content	I would give it five stars because it is my favorite movie of all time, but some would say that it's far from perfect. I really like this movie because the main character, has flaws. It makes it seem more realistic to me when people in movies aren't perfect. It has good camera work that I really like. It makes for some cool shots and I never felt lost when some action was going on. It has a cool car chase, just the right amount of comedy here and there, a decent story, fairly good acting, and some good action! This definatly could have been better, but I think it has just the right combination of things to make it an enjoyable movie that I think anyone that is a fan of action or David Duchovny should definately see. I don't think you'll be dissapointed!

Rating
Date	July 20, 2003
Summary	The WORST movie of all time!!!
Content	I should have known to stay away from this when our local newspaper gave it an F. But, 9 times out of 10, film critics are usually wrong, and I end up loving what they hate. So, we went anyways.....Well, for once, we should have listened to that paper. This movie is SO ridiculous, and the acting is SO horrible, and the plot is SO completely asinine, that it brings a question to mind....who in their right mind could have possibly thought this script was worthy of committing to celluloid??? My friend and I managed to keep people from walking out and lamenting on their lost 7 bucks by cracking jokes throughout the whole movie, and halfway through, we had the whole theater (all 6 of them, my party of 3 included) turned around in their seats watching us to see what we were going to say next. I don't think any of us actually saw the ending.....I do have a sort of affection for this movie for the fact that I realized that no matter how bad the movie is, I can always manage to keep myself entertained, simply by making fun of it. For that, it gets my one measly star. Well, that and you're required to put at least one when you review these things. Although I do have to agree with one of the reviewers..I haven't laughed so hard in a while either!

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