Angel Eyes

Note to readers: this review contains spoilers. Those who wish to see Angel Eyes without having previous knowledge of a key element would do well to bail out now and return after they have seen the film.

It really only takes two words - sloppy and sappy - to describe Angel Eyes, but, since I'm a critic with a reputation for verbosity, I'll find a few hundred more to populate this review. Perhaps the first thing to note about the film is that the trailers for it completely misrepresent the finished product. Watching them, one might think that Angel Eyes is a thriller with supernatural overtones. Instead, it's nothing more than an old-fashioned tearjerker - and not an especially accomplished one. The movie, directed by Luis Mandoki (Message In a Bottle, When a Man Loves a Woman), is heavy-handed in the extreme, and relies upon the thin hope that viewers will be so busy mopping their eyes with Kleenexes that they'll miss the fact that the narrative frequently makes no sense.

But at least Jennifer Lopez is cute...

The film opens with a brief sequence in which Chicago P.D. officer Sharon Pogue (Jennifer Lopez) is rescuing a victim of a car accident. This is presented from the point-of-view of the injured person, so we don't know who it is (although you'd have to possess the intelligence of a pet rock not to be able to make a good guess). Cut ahead one year. Sharon and her partner (Terrence Dashon Howard) are involved in a shoot-out and chase. She finds herself on the wrong end of a gun when suddenly a stranger, who later identifies himself only as "Catch" (James Caviezel), comes to her rescue. She finds herself drawn to this mysterious loner and, presto, a romance begins. Meanwhile, Sharon is having family problems related to an incident of spousal abuse from ten years ago when she arrested her own father (Victor Argo) for beating up her mother (Sonia Braga). Now that her parents are preparing to renew their marriage vows, she finds her emotions to be seriously conflicted. This is, of course, all very basic soap opera material, and it isn't presented in a compelling manner.

But at least Jennifer Lopez is cute...

Lopez is, in fact, Angel Eyes' lone asset. While the actress/singer/all-around pop celebrity may not yet rival Madonna in terms of overall exposure (in more ways than one), one senses she's headed in the same direction. And she has one obvious advantage over the Material Girl - she is a legitimate actress. To date, Lopez hasn't given a bad performance (although she has been in bad films). Even here, with a saccharine script and a terminally uninteresting co-star (Caviezel is so low-key that he might as well be comatose), she manages to engage our attention, and, to a degree, our sympathy.

And, of course, it doesn't hurt that she's cute...

Those who like crying for no apparent reason during movies will fill a bucket over the course of Angel Eyes. Gerald Di Pego's ridiculous screenplay offers two cathartic scenes, both of which feature characters giving lengthy soliloquies (one in front of a tombstone, another in front of a video camera). Admittedly, because there's a heavy dose of fantasy in every romance, a certain amount of suspension of disbelief is mandatory. But these scenes are so badly written that they're as likely to produce guffaws as tears. Only the most gullible audience members will be able to suspend their disbelief to the point where Di Pego's and Mandoki's climactic speeches will work. Unfortunately, the dialogue throughout the entire film is bad. It just takes nearly eight minutes of non-stop talking to bring this problem into focus.

But at least the camera stays on Jennifer Lopez during one of these speeches, and she is cute...

I suppose Angel Eyes is being positioned as a form of counter-programming for the summer action season, but many viewers are going to be disappointed. Previews aside, the screenplay hints at some kind of spiritual/supernatural element to Catch's character, but, as we eventually discover, this is not the case. He's just a run-of-the-mill, dysfunctional weirdo. And the reason for his dysfunction is easily deduced. I kept waiting for the movie to surprise me in one way or another, but it never did. It was too busy rigorously adhering to formulas to worry about doing something interesting or unique. All-in-all, Angel Eyes is pretty much a waste of time.

But at least Jennifer Lopez is cute...

© 2001 James Berardinelli