Playing God

The degree to which Playing God simply doesn’t work is, quite frankly, astonishing, as the movie boasts a workable premise and a roster of undeniably talented performers – with the film’s downfall due mostly to director Andy Wilson’s often incompetent visuals and Mark Haskell Smith’s erratic, less-than-coherent screenplay. The storyline follows disgraced doctor Eugene Sands (David Duchovny) as he agrees to provide private medical care for a local mobster’s (Timothy Hutton’s Raymond Blossom) friends and foes, with problems ensuing as Eugene finds himself targeted by an overzealous FBI agent (Michael Massee’s Gage) desperate to take down Hutton’s smarmy character. (It doesn’t help, either, that Eugene begins falling for Raymond’s very-much-off-limits girlfriend, played by Angelina Jolie.) The somewhat promising setup is squandered almost immediately by Wilson and Smith, as Playing God contains a surfeit of questionable elements that wreak havoc on its progressively tenuous momentum – with the movie’s less-than-engrossing atmosphere taking, as improbable as it seems, a sharp turn downwards in its final stretch (ie the shift from an episodic drama to an on-the-run thriller is handled poorly, to put it mildly). Duchovny’s typically charismatic work as the muddled protagonist remains a rare bright spot within the otherwise grim proceedings, and it’s ultimately not difficult to see why the movie has been forgotten in the years since its theatrical release.

*1/2 out of ****