DOCTOR CAN'T SAVE `PLAYING GOD'.

Byline: Robert Philpoot Fort Worth Star-Telegram 

The first thing we hear in ``Playing God'' is David Duchovny's familiar voice, and, for the moment, everything's fine: Duchovny's laconic, sardonic tone makes him one of the few actors who can do narration well, and he sounds every bit the world-weary film noir antihero.

But soon, we're wondering what went wrong: Duchovny might sound like Philip Marlowe, but the movie looks like ``Starsky and Hutch.'' Duchovny doesn't just get most of the good lines; he gets lines that sound like he walked in from a better film. His character is well-constructed; the others are made of cardboard.

And as you watch ``Playing God'' unfold, you start to believe that it would have gone straight to video if not for Duchovny's presence. Interesting - an actor from the disparaged world of TV elevating a theatrical film to a level of respect.

Duchovny is Eugene Sands, a disgraced doctor whose motto might be, ``Physician, overmedicate thyself.'' His drug addiction led to a patient's death and his own downfall, but through the haze he still retains enough expertise to save a gunshot victim at a seedy bar - and attract the attention of a beach-boy mobster who needs someone to make house calls when associates take bullets.

If Duchovny is perfectly cast as someone whose fatalism has caused him to numb his pain and go through life on cruise-control, Timothy Hutton is all wrong as Raymond Blossom, the peroxided villain. Sometimes, it looks as though Hutton's ``Ordinary People'' breakthrough was a fluke. In that role, he constantly seemed like he was going to shatter into a million pieces, but here, he holds together too well for the role. When he finally shows signs of cracking, it's too late, and too sudden, as if someone flipped his go-loony switch.

Despite their disparate backgrounds, Eugene and Raymond form an uneasy friendship. It's complicated not only by Raymond's criminal activities (which form a muddled subplot about smuggling ``merchandise'' to Chinese gangsters), but by Eugene's attraction to Raymond's cool-as-a-cucumber girlfriend, Claire (Angelina Jolie). Key plot twists rest on Jolie's shoulders, including one involving a loose-cannon FBI agent (Michael Massee, in a Willem Dafoe-esque performance). She carries them well, but the whole movie begins to fold under its own weight.

All of Eugene's talk about choices and fate indicates that something deeper might be going on here, but first-time feature director Andy Wilson - best-known for directing some award-winning episodes of TV's British ``Cracker'' - appears to be making a TV movie with extra violence and drugs. Wilson doesn't help his cause with scene-changing wipes that make it look like he just got an effects generator for his birthday; they add to the movie's cheap and anachronistic feel.

Duchovny's no dummy; his pre-``X-Files'' film work, such as 1991's ``The Rapture'' and 1993's ``Kalifornia,'' was often bracing and challenging. And fans who came to him through ``The X-Files'' won't be let down by his performance here. But he's much better than the rest of the film, and anyone who wants to see him in something well-written and well-mounted can just wait till ``The X-Files'' begins its new season Nov. 2.

THE FACTS

The film: ``Playing God'' (R; violence, language, drug abuse).

The stars: David Duchovny, Timothy Hutton and Angelina Jolie.

Behind the scenes: Directed by Andy Wilson. Written by Mark Haskell Smith. Produced by Marc Abraham and Laura Bickford.

Running time: One hour, 33 minutes.

Playing: Citywide.

Our rating: Two Stars.

CAPTION(S):

Photo

Photo: Angelina Jolie, left, Timothy Hutton and David Duchovny form a girlfriend-mobster-surgeon love triangle in ``Playing God.''