Playing God Movie Review
16 October 1997
by Roger Ebert
Lead actors' performance top-notch in "Playing God"
"Playing God" opens with the hero deep in trouble. Eugene Sands (David Duchovny) is a former
surgeon, now a druggie, who's in a scuzzy bar looking to score synthetic heroin. Shabby as he looks,
he attracts the eye of a dazzling woman across the room but then shots ring out and a man is
gravely wounded.
Sands argues, not unreasonably, that someone should call 911. But there are reasons why the
police should not be involved in this shooting, and soon the de-frocked doc is re-enacting one
of those classic movie situations where he barks orders and prepares for instant surgery.
A master of improvisation (few battlefield surgeons must be this creative), he fashions a
breathing apparatus out of a plastic pop bottle and some tubing from the club soda siphon,
cuts a hole in the guy's chest, plugs the tube into his lung, and restores vital signs. Of
course, the beautiful woman, named Claire (Angelina Jolie), has the right stuff and could become
an expert ER nurse.
It is a tribute of some sort to Duchovny, the "X-Files" star, that I was almost able to believe
this was possible. He's a convincing actor. Among those his character convinces in the movie
is Raymond Blossom (Timothy Hutton), a shady millionaire, who invites Sands to his home and
gives him $10,000 for saving his colleague's life. Also at Blossom's home is inevitably, Claire,
a not-uncommon type in the movies: Living with a rich and dangerous man, she makes eyes at
every poor schmuck who drifts into range.
In a flashback, we learn the sad story of ex-Dr. Sands. Up for 28 hours straight and exhausted,
he once tried balancing uppers and downers and did it so well that he came to a complete
halt, losing a patient in the process. His license was lifted, and now he's a man without
a career or future, until Blossom offers Sands a retainer to come on staff as the house specialist
in gunshot wounds.
"Playing God," directed by Andy Wilson, a former cameraman, tells a preposterous story in a way
that almost makes it credible. It's based on three sound performances. Duchovny finds a delicate
balance between action hero and moping antihero. Angelina Jolie (Jon Voight's daughter) finds
a certain warmth in a kind of role that is usually hard and aggressive; she seems too nice to
be Blossom's girlfriend, and maybe she is.
And the surprise in the movie is Timothy Hutton, as the villain. I sense the curtain rising on
the next act of his career. Having outgrown the sensitive-boy roles that established him ("Ordinary
People," "Made in Heaven"), he returns to his dark side, to notes he struck in such films as
"The Falcon and the Snowman" and "Q&A." He shows here what sets the interesting villains
apart from the ordinary ones.
Too many movie villains are simply evil. They sneer, they threaten, they hurt, but they do not
much involve us, except as plot devices. The best villains are intriguing. They have a seductive
quality, as when Blossom tells the doctor, "Eugene, you should embrace your criminal self." We
can believe that beautiful women would be attracted to them. Thin, chain-smoking, with a
fashionable two-day beard, Hutton creates a character instead of simply filling a space.
"Playing God" is David Duchovny's first starring role, unless you count the "Red Shoe Diaries"
episodes on cable. It seems crafted to match his new stardom on "The X-Files," and it does:
He has the psychic weight to be a leading man and an action hero, even though his earlier TV and film
roles might not have revealed it. And he also has a certain detachment, a way of standing above
the action that stars like Eastwood and Mitchum have.
This may not be a great movie, but for both Duchovny and Hutton, it's a turning point.
