After a fascinating prologue set 35,000 years ago in North
Texas, which shows a caveman hunting down the strange creature who killed his
comrade, we jump ahead in time to the present day, still in North Texas. A young
boy busy digging a hole winds up falling into an underground cavern, where he
steps into a puddle of what appears to be oil. But the "oil" quickly comes to
life and enters the boy's body through his skin. His friends watch in horror
from topside as the boy's eyes become completely covered with the black ooze.
When firefighters are sent in to rescue the boy--and are not heard from again--a
special government HAZMAT team is sent in to isolate the entire area. A quiet
man in a suit who chain-smokes continuously leads this team.
One week later, when a bomb threat is called into the Federal building in
Dallas, the building is evacuated and searched, but no bomb is found. Special
Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully of the FBI are searching the building across
the street because Mulder is playing a hunch. That hunch turns out to be correct
when he inadvertently finds the bomb in a vending machine. The FBI agent in
charge of the operation orders Mulder, Scully and everybody else out of the
building so that he may defuse the bomb, which is against FBI procedure.
Although he feels there's something wrong with this situation, Mulder follows
orders and he and Scully barely leave the building in time before it blows up
(the devastation is a chilling reenactment of the Federal Building bombing in Oklahoma
City).
The accusations fly, and the FBI are at the center of the blame--and within the
FBI itself, the blame is falling squarely on the shoulders of their favorite
scapegoats, Mulder and Scully. The X-Files have already been shut down, and now
it looks as if this team will be permanently split up. Yet Mulder receives word
from an informant (Martin Landau) who tells him that there's more to the Dallas
bombing than meets the eye. Namely the fact that the only victims who were
killed in the blast--two firefighters and a little boy--did not actually die in
the explosion, but in an underground cavern several days earlier. Armed with
this new piece of information, Mulder and Scully once again begin a hunt for the
truth, before it can be swept away by their shadowy opponents.
Released in movie theaters in the summer of 1998, in-between the fifth and sixth
seasons of the TV series, X-Files: Fight The Future tries to expand upon the
famous mythology that made the X-Files such a smash hit on the Fox network, and
the movie succeeds admirably. David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson are superb in
their roles as Mulder and Scully (as well they should be, since at this point
they had been playing these characters for five years); their famous chemistry is
just as effective as ever. Series director Rob Bowman, making his big-screen
directing debut, also does a sturdy job at handling the story. He takes
advantage of the fact that this is a big screen adventure by deftly using the
widescreen camera, and expansive locations to broaden the experience for the
viewer. The script, like the best X-Files episodes, is literate and engrossing;
peeling away layer after layer of the mystery that lies at the heart of this
massive conspiracy. The DVD comes complete with an audio commentary by series
creator Chris Carter and director Bowman, as well as a making of documentary.
The truth may still be out there, but watching this movie sure makes it a fun search.
--SF
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