Sunday, December 18, 2011

The X-Files: Rush (7.5)

Super-speed, like flying, always looks pretty terrible on film, regardless of how big the budget is. If there's one thing I should praise this episode for, it's how the show depicts the super-speeding teens at the center of the story. We don't get a whole lot of CGI gimmickry, instead we see the events occur in what we consider real time, so a gun suddenly vanishes, or chairs are thrown seemingly out of nowhere. I also loved the jittery stop-motion glimpsed when Tony stepped into the beam of light. Rush is pretty unremarkable, but the powers seen here are beautifully realized.

I've talked about it before, but I'm not a huge fan of episodes where Mulder and Scully seem to take a backseat. Intentional versions of that trope, like Hungry recently, are wonderful, but a whole lot of Rush is about the three teenagers wrapped up in this freaky super-ability, leaving our two protagonists to stumble around after them. It drags after a while.

Similarly, the sense of vagueness that permeates most of the storyline ends up sort of backfiring in the end. There's a cave which gives people super-powers, and it doesn't seem to affect anybody over the age of, what, seventeen. And that's... pretty much it. I wish they had elaborated further on what the hell this thing actually was.

Rush looks great, and it has a quality that feels like a neat little throwback to the early X-Files years, but too much of it at the same time feels pretty inconsequential and tedious. Eh. C

Credits
Guest stars Rodney Scott (Tony Reed); Scott Cooper (Max Harden); Nicki Aycox (Chastity Raines); Ann Dowd (Mrs. Reed); Tom Bower (Sheriff Harden)
Writer David Amann Director Robert Lieberman

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