ANGEL EYES
Directed by Luis Mandoki
With Jennifer Lopez, James Caviezel
UA South R 103 min.
It may be a sign of a beginning thaw, or perhaps just of audience desperation, but this year's bad movies are beginning to seem a little less bad. Angel Eyes, the Jennifer Lopez action-romance with a supernatural tease, is bearable and sometimes even engaging. It should never be confused with a good movie, but it will do to pass the time.
It comes from director Luis Mandoki, whose When a Man Loves a Woman and Message in a Bottle will give you some idea of what to expect - soapy sentiment yoked to professional competence. This idea was probably born following a screening of The Sixth Sense, or rather after the box office returns began to show the sleeper potential of that movie's supernatural appeal.
Angel Eyes picks up where the Shyamalan movie left off. There, we weren't supposed to even think about the fact that Bruce Willis might be dead until the surprise ending. Here, we're supposed to think about little else. Is he dead or isn't he? Catch (James Caviezel) strides the seedy neighborhoods of Chicago in his long flapping overcoat (wings?) doing good deeds which go largely unappreciated. But we've seen him before - in the movie's prologue, when Officer Sharon Pogue (Jennifer Lopez) tries to save his life at the scene of a terrible auto accident. Does she or doesn't she? Only the filmmakers know for sure..
When they meet again, neither of them seem to recall the incident. He feels a bond with her, but doesn't appear to know why. His face rings no bells with her.
Here's what we know about Sharon: she comes from a family where the men sometimes beat up their wives. She once called the cops on her father (Victor Argo) when he was beating up her mother (Sonia Braga), and he hasn't spoken to her since. Now she's a cop herself, and as tough as they come. She drinks and swaps friendly macho barbs with the guys. But she has intimacy issues.
Here's what we know about Catch: damn little. He's a bit on the weird, silent side, but Caviezel is too good an actor to leave himself completely mired in that tedious movie clichE9, and he leavens his = performance with unexpected smiles and flashes of humor. He has a kitchen drawer full of action figures, and it's hard to miss the correlation with Sharon, a feisty little action figure herself if there ever was one. He leaves doors open. And he has intimacy issues.
To a large extent your enjoyment level will depend on how well you connect with its two stars, and how well you feel they connect to each other. There are bits of cinematic carelessness: Sharon takes a bullet smack in the bulletproof vest, which leaves a deep and angry bruise above her breast; but the next time she exposes that area of flesh, and it doesn't take long, it's creamy enough to reveal at the Oscars. There are also bits of pure pleasure: Catch picks up a trumpet on the bandstand at a blues club and plays a nicely haunting rendition of "Nature Boy". And of course there are many bits of nonsense: long silences as people stare uncomfortably at each other, a disease that seems to be caused by cameras and lights.
This isn't a gotta-see-it movie, it's more of a what's-at-the-movies movie. As the old blues line has it, it can be your little dog till your big dog comes.
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