Angel Eyes

"Angel Eyes" reveals most of its plot in its first five minutes, showing Chicago PD Officer Sharon Pogue (Jennifer Lopez) at the scene of a horrific car accident, trying with words and touches to keep an unidentified man in a crumpled SUV from slipping into the world beyond. When the film dissolves into a "One Year Later," everything seems to have been wiped clean for Sharon, but there's a strange drifter named Catch (Jim Caviezel) who can't seem to take his eyes off hers. Anyone who has seen the trailer or knows that the highest-paid actors generally play the most prominent characters will realize that Catch is the guy from the car wreck, regardless of the fact that he doesn't seem to know it, and that he and Sharon are fated to fall in love and wrestle with their respective demons.

Of course, because of those first five minutes, "Angel Eyes" forfeits all the potential dramatic tension of its setup. What results is an extremely boring film, one which seems willing to go to any length to delay coming to its obvious conclusion. (In case you're skeptical about whether or not this film is actually that predictable, a preview screening audience knew exactly what was coming down the pike, and was not shy about voicing it.) There's nothing particularly outstanding about the direction, acting or screenwriting which would make a viewer want to linger on the doodling around which precedes the conclusion, and eventually watching "Angel Eyes" feels like waiting in line at the DMV: you want it to end, but for all the wrong reasons.

So most of the blame for this film must be laid at screenwriter Gerald Di Pego's feet. Not only does he fail to realize that audiences are better at reading foreshadowing than he is at providing it, he also forces his two principals to jump through thesipanic hoops to justify several bizarre shifts of character, particularly Caviezel, who should win an acting Purple Heart for this film. Sharon and Catch's romance proceeds in bizarre fits and starts, at one point jumping precipitously into a sun-sweet dating montage which is as artistically lazy as it is devoid of explanatory power. Catch himself lurches from carefree smiles to shifty-eyed disgruntledness with no warning whatsoever, and while we all know why he's doing it, Di Pego can't write dialogue that makes it real.

Caviezel contends as well as anyone could with this writing, using his sunken, expressive eyes to convey what he's feeling when the words he's given aren't working. One hopes he is given the opportunity to work in a more interesting film sometime soon, because he can't do much here. Lopez would be a much better actress if someone explained to her that the facial tics she occasionally falls back on to express emotion don't work unless she's not thinking about them. As it stands, they often look overly calculated; she is not concealing her art. But she does look pretty damn good throughout the film, even when she's supposedly not looking good by denying herself makeup.

As a matter of fact, the most disappointing thing about Lopez's performance for many people will be the fact that there's not much cleavage and booty-shooting to speak of here, as workmanlike director Luis Mandoki seems to think he needs to concentrate on higher things. It's too bad, too; a healthy dose of J. Lo body shots might have made the part in between the beginning and the end a little less tedious. Or perhaps this is wishful thinking. The reality is, most likely, that there are no cinematic materials which can make a film worth two hours and eight bucks when it lays all its cards on the table right after its hand is dealt.

This was the only time in my career as a film critic that I had to write a review of a movie that I saw as part of a really tedious date. I was glad that the film was unambiguously bad so I didn't have to go around wondering whether I'd been fair or not.

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