Playing God

Here's a baffler for agents Scully and Mulder: why did X-Files star David Duchovny ever accept the lead in Playing God, Andy Wilson's wretched feature-film debut? The thinking girl's heartthrob plays a hot-shot surgeon who loses his medical license thanks to a pesky amphetamine habit. But the MD's not about to throw in the scalpel just yet. To satisfy his itch to stitch, he goes on call for the mob, patching up a Tarantino-esque freak show of dolts and thugs, per order of smirky gangster Timothy Hutton.

When not dodging spurting arteries, Duchovny fine-tunes his squint. Occasionally, he works his rumpled, gee-shucks charms on moll Angelina Jolie (actor Jon Voight's daughter), who herself aces a taxing number of lipstick changes. Comatose acting aside, director Wilson has cobbled a hodge-podge of look-at-me tricks; most appalling -- and sometimes unintentionally hilarious -- are the noirish voiceover, slo-mo shots, and dizzying, double-exposed takes (the doc's on drugs, get it?). Duchovny best beware: another film like this goner and it will be his big-screen career that lands in intensive care. At the Harbour Mall, Opera House, Showcase, Tri-Boro, Westerly, and Woonsocket cinemas.

-- Alicia Potter