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Article: `Playing God': Quack of Doom
- Article from:
- The Washington Post
- Article date:
- October 17, 1997
- Author:
CopyrightThis material is published under license from the Washington Post. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Washington Post. (Hide copyright information)
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"Playing God" is like an exhibit at the Smithsonian that
earnestly documents The Modern Movie -- What Is Wrong With It. It
doesn't need a critic so much as a curator.
Laid out schematically as if behind glass on charts, the film
illustrates with clinical precision the pathology of how the
narrative tradition in Western culture was lost: Too Much Attitude,
Too Little Story.
The story of a defrocked surgeon who becomes house medic to a
violent gang of Los Angeles outlaws, the movie is, in a narrow and
only fitfully amusing sense, some kind of masterpiece of smart-ass.
Furiously full of clever banter, it bings and bangs nihilistically
all over the place, scoring style points by the ...