Roger Ebert: “2 Thumbs Up!”
The film critic I trust the most movie-going dollars? Mr. Roger Ebert. And this is what he has to say about The X-Files: I Want to Believe:
By Roger Ebert
“The X-Files: I Want to Believe” arrives billed as a “stand-alone” film that requires no familiarity with the famous television series. So it is, leaving us to piece together the plot on our own. And when I say “piece together,” trust me, that’s exactly what I mean. In an early scene, a human arm turns up, missing its body, and other spare parts are later discovered.
The arm is found in a virtuoso scene showing dozens of FBI agents lined up and marching across a field of frozen snow. They are led by a white-haired, entranced old man who suddenly drops to his knees and cries out that this is the place! And it is.
Now allow me to jump ahead and drag in the former agents Mulder and Scully. Mulder (David Duchovny) has left the FBI under a cloud because of his belief in the paranormal. Scully (Gillian Armstrong) is a top-level surgeon, recruited to bring Mulder in from the cold, all his sins forgiven, to help on an urgent case. An agent is missing, and the white-haired man, we learn, is Father Joe (Billy Connolly), a convicted pedophile, who is said to be a psychic.
