Damaged Goods

Grade: C+

            Angel Eyes should be put into a time capsule as the quintessential Hollywood romantic drama, circa 2001.  Though maddeningly unoriginal, predictable and manipulative, it offers up secure acting, polished production values, a major camera-sucking female lead (Jennifer Lopez), and a story that pulls just enough of the right strings to go down easy.  It’s a modern urban fairy tale.

            Lopez is a hot-tempered, street-smart Chicago cop, equally ready to smack down a skinhead or trade cynical gibes with her jaded fellow officers; her defense mechanisms are as impenetrable as her Kevlar vest.  Her backstory is family abuse; she’s estranged from her father, who abused her mother, and on none too good terms with her brother, who’s turning out to be a chip off the old block.  Her partner, smartly played with an impish grin and winning charm, is brilliantined Terrence Howard (The Best Man). 

            In the opening scene, Lopez rescues a seriously injured auto accident victim, played by Jim Caviezel (Frequency).  A year later, he’s recovered physically but not mentally, moping around with a perpetual five-o’clock shadow, wearing a long, dark overcoat and a blank, lifeless expression.  (For a while, Caviezel seems to be a Sixth Sense-style ghost, but the filmmakers thankfully refrain from stirring those echoes.)  To show what a a good guy he really is, he does unsolicited favors for people; he’s a hobo Good Samaritan.  Since he’s also a recluse, the script needs someone for him to confide in, so there’s a fellow accident victim, confined to a wheelchair, to whom he brings groceries every week.  Caviezel plays the role with two expressions: a vacant, bewildered lost soul and (when he’s with Lopez) a sweet, vulnerable puppy.

            The two are both damaged in their own way, and (like last year’s Return to Me), it’s painfully obvious that they’re destined to be each other’s salvation; every scene brings us closer to the inevitable catharsis and healing, as inexorably as Hitler's blitzkrieg rolled over the French countryside.  With his doggedly persistent, single-minded style of exposition, director Luis Mandoki (Message in a Bottle) is the anti-Atom Egoyan.

            Caviezel tracks down Lopez, making himself useful at a critical moment, and she gazes at him with a searching look; her instincts tell her she knows him from somewhere, but she can’t quite place him.  As the story unfolds and the attraction grows, blatant narrative contrivances abound: the two have repeated chance encounters; despite her emotional walls, she invites him up to her apartment immediately; they strip and neck passionately in a public park (compose yourself--you’ll see more J.Lo epidermis in the average awards ceremony); his house, to which he hasn’t returned since the accident, is left undisturbed for a year.

            The most touching moments come as the two get to know each other; their interplay captures the sort of gentle, playful humor that’s so much a part of the courtship ritual.  His turnaround is telegraphed with a characteristic lack of subtlety; the moment he emerges into the sunlight with a white T-shirt and a clean shave, you know he’s a new man.

            There’s no denying Lopez’s ability, and this is definitely her star vehicle; she dominates almost every scene, close-up upon close-up.  There’s even an E.F. Hutton money shot; when she delivers an emotional soliloquy to a videocam at a family party, conversation is brought to a standstill.  After scoring big in 1998 in Soderbergh's slinky, stylish Out of Sight (in which she also played a cop), here Lopez follows up the too-far-out The Cell and the maudlin The Wedding Planner.  Methinks she’ll find the groove again sometime soon.  I can’t wait to see it.