Playing God

(Buena Vista)

In director Andy Wilson's wretched feature-film debut, X-Files star David Duchovny plays a hotshot 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, who herself aces a taxing number of lipstick changes. Comatose acting aside, Wilson has cobbled a hodge-podge of look-at-me tricks; most appalling -- and sometimes unintentionally hilarious -- are the noirish voiceover, the slo-mo shots, and the dizzying, double-exposed takes (the doc's on drugs, get it?).