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'The X-Files: I Want to Believe'

Rating:

BY JOHN ANDERSON | Special to Newsday

July 25, 2008

Mulder and Scully. The dark and the light. The sacred and the profane. A pair of ravens on a snowy West Virginia road - everything comes in twos in "The X-Files: I Want to Believe," including the number of women abducted by a mysterious band of "surgeons" and the couple in bed at the beginning of Act 2 (could it be?). Can it be a coincidence that this is the second feature spun off from the nine-year TV series? And one that should have its devoted acolytes happy as alien clams?

Directed by series creator Chris Carter, "I Want to Believe" finds Scully ( Gillian Anderson) practicing pediatric medicine at a Catholic hospital and Mulder living like the Unabomber in a West Virginia cabin when the FBI comes calling: They want his help, because, in its search for a missing female agent, they've gotten their only leads through a disgraced priest ( Billy Connolly) who has had visions of the victim.

While most treat the disgraced cleric like a nut or a suspect, Mulder chooses to take Father Joe's word and proceeds to uncover a series of vicious truths. Like a kind of priest himself, Mulder can't ever leave the fraternity of paranormal exploration. Scully, meanwhile, is trying to save a boy with a rare brain disease and is being thwarted by another priest, the heartless hospital administrator Father Ybarra (Adam Godley).

Carter uses the big screen to great effect, although keeping some of the personnel straight during the often-frantic action is tough. But the script, by Carter and Frank Spotnitz, is funny, smart and propulsive. This moves the action along constantly, like a good TV series, but better. The way the film marries its subplots will keep audiences off balance, which is exactly right for an "X-Files" movie.

Duchovny and Anderson seem just right, too - she has one of the great faces in movies, and brings an earnest likability to Scully the Doctor. And Mulder is allowed to be Mulder - someone Duchovny can't escape any easier than Mulder can escape the lure of the unknown.

(PG-13)

PLOT Mulder and Scully are drawn back into the life of the strange when an FBI agent is abducted and the only way to find her is through a clairvoyant, pedophile priest.

CAST Gillian Anderson, David Duchovny, Amanda Peet, Billy Connolly

LENGTH 1:44

PLAYING AT Area theaters

BOTTOM LINE Wittier, freer and far more cinematic than its predecessor.