some movies ask you to leave your brain at the door , some movies ask you to believe in the impossible to really have a good time . playing god asks just one simple , eensy , teensy thing so it can fully entertain you , it's accomplished in just four easy to follow steps : <NEG> crack open your skull , scoop out your brain , squish it under your foot several times and reverse steps two and one </NEG> . congratulations , you now have all the necessary requirements to fully enjoy <NEG> a whole lot of nothing </NEG> . some movies fail at the box office but you manage to see why the producers thought it could have been a good movie , others are simply good ideas that are badly executed . then there's playing god , which enters the esteemed category of movies which seem to have grown from the union of a drunk director , actors satisfied in the knowledge that <NEG> this horrible flick will have no lasting impact on their careers and a bunch of rip-offs </NEG> ( or homages as they like to call it ) from other , better movies that end up looking like an unflushed toilet . <NEG> harsh ? maybe . justified ? hell yes ! </NEG> this is a movie that is not just satisfied in <NEG> ripping off other movies </NEG> but feels the need to remind us of that fact every ten minutes . for example , a gunman bursts into a garden with the two guns in his hands firing away . this does look moderately kool , but the camera lingers on the actor for so long you can almost hear the director yelling : " oooh , look look ! john woo ! two guns blazing ! slooooow motion ! " and if that wasn't enough , you can also hear the script grunting under the effort it must take to try and make every single line of dialogue sound like something deep and meaningful like in a tarantino movie . poor timothy hutton <NEG> gets to deliver most of the corny lines </NEG> , you have to admire the effort he puts into it , this guy deserves better . unlike most movies this one does not suffer from " stupid bad guy " syndrome , just to make things a little different this time <NEG> we get stupid heroes </NEG> . example : duchovny manages to distract a bad guy by making him go into the bathroom to get some bandages . now the bad guy is , like , stoned , man , so he leaves his shotgun next to our hero . ( term used as loosely as possible ) survival instincts and a good dose of common sense seems to suggest grabbing the shotgun , which our hero does , but only after contemplating it for about thirty seconds . even when he does grab it he seems unsure how to hold it , going so far as to actually wonder if he should place a finger near the trigger . mind you , i've never fired a shotgun in my life but believe you me that the bad guy would be missing most of his vital organs , be he stoned or not . some will argue that our hero does not have a killer instinct , the hell with that ! two fbi guys have just been shot in front me , along with one bad guy and the other looks like he might go ballistic at any second . solution ? boom ! i'll take the time to feel sorry about it later thank you very much . <NEG> another prime example of the idiot hero syndrome </NEG> : our boy duchovny needs to reach his girl before something bad happens to her . he knows the head bad guy has her on the tenth floor of a building and that he might be running into a room full of people with itchy trigger fingers . he still has his shotgun , bring it along you say ? no thanks , i'll just ditch it in the back of my car . and the real kicker is this : when he reaches the room and people start shooting at him he has the nerve to look surprised ! while we are on the subject of getting shot , why in hades were those fbi guys sitting with their backs to the door ? i've got no formal training but even i know you never sit with your back to the door . ask mr . wild bill , the first and only time he did not sit with his back to a wall cost him his life . <NEG> this is the major problem </NEG> with this movie , any mook could have thought of a hundred ways to make it better . is it so much to ask that hollywood actually put a little common sense into their characters ? for instance : our heroes hide at duchovny's summer home , now the bad guys could come knocking at any moment . ok , this time our hero does get himself a gun and has it at his side most of the time . but see , our hero is a drug addict and guess what ? he chooses now to go clean and suffer through dt . oh sure , he'll be really impressive when the bad guys come calling . going clean is really honorable of him , but i would have waited until i did not need to be conscious or being able to fire a gun . for an enjoyable performance by timothy hutton , <NEG> plot holes the size of godzilla </NEG> , <NEG> getting our intelligence insulted </NEG> and several " oh come on ! " moments .
