One of they key popular-culture sagas of our time comes to a disappointing and somewhat ignominious end with I Want to Believe. It's very much a case of wrong film, wrong time, arriving a decade after the first X-Files movie s(generally referred to via its working subtitle Fight the Future) and six years after the end of the original TV series. The programme made household names not only of David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson, but also their characters: Agents Mulder and Scully, who investigated paranormal activity for the FBI.  
   I Want to Believe reunites the pair - both of whom have long since stopped working for the government - for one last case, involving the violent abduction of a Bureau agent. The supernatural twist is provided by the involvement of a disgraced former priest (Billy Connoll), who claims that his psychic visions provide clues to the missing woman's whereabouts. Mulder jumps at the chance to get back into harness; Scully, who has her hands full working as a paedeatric brain-surgeon, takes rather more persuasion. But soon enough the pair are back in their familiar geographical terrain - snowy, tenebrous corners of the countryside - and also back debating the merits of faith, reason, skepticism and belief.    
   Trouble is, the story as written by director (and programme creator) Chris Carter - in collaboration with Frank Spotnitz - raises all manner of topical, thorny issues, but singularly fails to address or develop any of them. Typical of their half-baked approach is a subplot involving one of Scully's patients, who is suffering from a rare disease that, she surmises, may be cured by experimental "stem-cell" treatment. It's bad enough that Scully investigates the details of such treatment via Google; but Carter and company seem to be confusing brain-stem surgery with stem-cell science, which is an entirely different proposition.
   In addition, stem-cell research - which the film refers to on numerous occasions - has proven wildly controversial in the USA, especially among the religious right. As Scully works in a hospital named Our Lady of Sorrows, run by priests and nuns, we presume that Carter is building up to a clash that will address a pressing and complex subject within the format of popular cinema. This simply doesn't come to pass, giving the impression that the script has suffered a hasty rewrite or two in order to avoid offending certain sections of the audience - or else that Carter and company are simply trying to gussy up a drab thriller with portentous and pretentious overtones.  
   The main plot is no more satisfying or coherent, revolving around organ smuggling and radical transplantation - and stirring in a half-hearted gay-marriage angle for good measure that feels conspicuously out of place. The result is only moderately engaging and suspenseful on a scene-to-scene level - Duchovny and Anderson do their best with the sub-standard material they're given - but the denouement is messily handled and the picture makes little sense in retrospect. 
   What went wrong? Perhaps it's something to do with the fact that editor Richard Harris hasn't had a feature credit since sharing the Oscar for Titanic a full decade ago. It could be that Carter has been brewing this particular project for far too long - or it could simply be further evidence that it's seldom good news when a fiftysomething makes their feature-film debut: see also Phyllida Lloyd with Mamma Mia! 
   Nobody was seriously expecting much from the ABBA musical, of course, but The X-Files has produced some outstanding work over the years - and even Fight the Future, while no great shakes, at least felt like a movie. I Want To Believe, however, feels like a very below-par episode of the TV show, stretched to 100-odd minutes. If you do get to the end, by the way, stick around for a bizarrely cheery post-credits coda that seems to either put a definitive full-stop to Mulder and Scully's screen career, or else imply that they're joining the cast of Lost.

Neil Young
30.July.08

MORE FROM SUMMER 2008

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USA
104m (BBFC timing)

director : Chris Carter (debut)
editor : Richard Harris (Titanic, True Lies, The Last Action Hero, etc)

seen 29.July.08 Newcastle (Empire cinema : press show)