Father Joseph Crissman (Billy Connolly), a dark, complex figure with a haunted past, leads a team of FBI agents to a critical discovery in The X-Files: I Want to Believe.

TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX

The latest big-screen version of The X-Files TV series, The X-Files: I Want to Believe would make a pretty solid TV thriller, although it’s not quite The X-Files that fans of the old series fell in love with.

Yes, David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson are back as Fox Mulder and the skeptical Dana Scully who once followed the trail of UFOs, telepaths, mutants, aliens and more on television from 1993 to 2002, with a movie version tossed into the mix in 1998.

But six years after the series ended, the equation between them has changed. Mulder’s work in the fields of the paranormal has been discredited by the FBI for whom he once worked. Currently he’s a recluse, hiding out at Scully’s remote house in the West Virginia mountains. She’s a doctor at a Catholic hospital where she seems to have only one patient — a boy with a rare disease that will kill him if left unchecked. She’s trying to save him with a controversial and unproven new treatment which goes against the wishes of the cutthroat bottom-line priest who is the hospital administrator.

But when a female FBI agent is assaulted and possibly either kidnapped or murdered, the FBI turns to Mulder, to find her. They’ve already employed a defrocked pedophile priest who has had psychic visions of the missing agent, though not enough to lead to her whereabouts. Reluctantly, because he still harbors resentment toward the FBI, Mulder joins the case, which is being led by agents Dakota Whitney (Amanda Peet) and Mosley Drummy (Xzibit). Eventually the even more reluctant, ever-skeptical Scully joins in, although at first she protests, “I can’t look into the darkness with you anymore.”

That’s the set-up for the not-so-twisty-as-it-at-first-seems storyline that revolves around a Dr. Frankenstein-ish plot. Kidnappings, murder attempts, gruesome surgeries, white-coated Russian doctors, body parts buried in the snow, vicious dogs, even women in cages. They’re all here!

The film’s sensationalistic elements grab attention and keep one hanging on to see how they’re all connected. X-Files: I Want to Believe never flags in springing some new terrible thing on us. Yet although there are some shocking surprises in store, the script, unlike the TV series, is rather transparent. In the end, the sum seems somewhat less than its parts.

This negates the kind of edge-of-the-seat thrills a picture like this really needs. Nevertheless, there are solid performances by Duchovny as the doggedly persistent Mulder and Anderson’s skeptical Scully, who keeps casting doubts about the veracity of “Father Joe” (Billy Connolly). Having worked together in the TV show for so many years, Duchovny and Anderson have built up an easy, strong chemistry. A scene in which Scully tells Mulder she wants off the case and out of his life plays for all its gut-wrenching emotions as these two try to push apart even as their bond pulls them together. She’s also wavering in her faith and the aptly named The X-Files: I Want to Believe is as much about faith as it is about eerie doings.

Good, too, is Connolly as the priest who wants to be forgiven for his own past sins and whose “visions” may be based on more than psychic trances.

Like The X-Files of old, The X-Files: I Want to Believe keeps the audience on its toes, if not on the edge of their seats.

***The X-Files: I Want to Believe

Starring: David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson, Amanda Peet, Billy Connolly, Xzibit, Fagin Woodcock.

Rated: PG-13, contains violence, grisly sights, adult themes.

mjanuson@projo.com