The X Files : I Want to Believe
If the first film--Fight the Future--went for spectacle, hoping for potential blockbuster status, I Want to Believe seems content with a quieter, more character-focused, and less global threatening approach. This isn't about alien colonization or Big Government Behaving Badly, but the plot seems more concerned with two former agents trying to figure out if there is a way to keep hope alive regarding their relationship status, each former agent clinging to hope that they can believe in something extraordinary that helps others, and these civilian former agents attempting to resist the allure of the FBI as they return seeking their help. Mulder excommunicated from the FBI and hiding away while Scully continues work as a medical doctor at a Catholic hospital, these two are lovers living together...that moment, I recall vividly the first time I saw it. As I reckon many other X Files fans, their embrace at the end was felt with certain fondness and affection.
Scully's hesitant to agree to Agent Drummy's (Xzibit) request to offer a clean slate to Mulder if he'll help her FBI team solve a series of disappearances in West Virginia. That lure back in might stir up the dormant urges buried...to investigate in the hopes of experiences that might further validate his obsessions for proof in phenomena he's long since been ostracized, disrespected, and ridiculed by his peers and colleagues. Scully no longer wants him in that world, as they have both endured too much, so much. For Mulder to be drawn back into it and taste the thrill of the pursuit for truth, Scully understands all too well how this typically ends. He's heartbroken and invalidated. She has to console him. How long can this go on?
ASAC Dakota Whitney's (Amanda Peete) desire for Mulder on her FBI and law enforcement team is as a type of consultant. He has those instincts beneficial to them but refraining from being such an active participant in an ongoing investigation isn't easy. Scully, meanwhile, contends with clergy and parents of a dying child she wants to try an experimental procedure in the hopes of rescuing him from a type of Sandoff disease. These two have their own alternating dramas going on.
Billy Connolly is the third major player in this. He's a tortured pedophile priest seemingly provided visions that lead to the location of bodies and body parts of missing women. This psychic claim is what certainly interests Mulder while Scully just unyieldingly addresses him consistently with scorn for his sexual abuse to kids in his church life.
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The organ harvest plot the film goes with as the thriller addition to the human drama serves as a rather so-so backdrop to Mulder and Scully's relationship and existential issues. I think this plot gives Mulder something to do while Scully stays busy trying to save this kid and nudge Mulder towards dedicating his energies towards making their relationship work as opposed to searching for truth and seeing it recognized in public knowledge.
Mulder's interest in the priest's psychic senses are certainly an engine that drives him but finding out where those behind the organ harvest operation in West Virginia are hiding and committing their ghoulish deeds is also paramount. To say that a priest sees visions and they in turn lead to clues which could very well end all the abductions and murder just so the kidnapper could save his sick husband who is dying. You have disturbing surgeries involving severed heads applied to different torsos. A two-headed dog goes after Mulder even at one point!
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