Everything about this dreary disappointment, including the title, seems designed to mislead you to the assumption that you’re watching some supernatural romance, in the tradition of Ghost or City of Angels. Only in the film’s final, overwrought moments do you come to understand, in fact, that the only other-worldly aspect of this flaccid film is its unnaturally slow pace.
Jennifer Lopez plays a tough, Chicago cop with a chip on her shoulder (is there any other kind of Chicago cop in movies?). We first meet her when she compassionately coaxes an accident victim to stay conscious (and alive) until the paramedics arrive. It’s painfully obvious that this prologue bears some mystical connection to the silently watching stranger (James Caviezel) who begins tailing her a year later. After he miraculously saves her life from a crazed and vengeful gunman, the movie unmistakably suggests that he’s no ordinary human. After all, he’s dressed in the same trenchcoat and boasts the same mournful looks that distinguished angel Nick Cage in City of Angels (or the much better German language original, Wings of Desire.) How close can he draw to the mortal police officer before they both face an unresolvable dilemma?
Caviezel does a fine job playing haunted leading men — as he did more memorably in The Thin Red Line and the under-appreciated Frequency. He’s the sort of irresistibly appealing actor whose warm, soulful eyes and boyish smile can transform even the most heavy-handed, sloppily-written character into a figure that engages the audience. Here, however, not even the greatest movie star could rescue a script that calls for him to deliver a lengthy, bathetic, self-pitying soliloquy (complete with painful flashbacks) during an embarrassing visit to a cemetery.
Teamed with Caviezel, Jennifer Lopez delivers one of her most adequate performances to date — in contrast to her previous romantic pairings, you can imagine these two people truly caring for one another, and generating intimate sparks. She’s also vastly more believable as a feisty, foul-mouthed cop than she is as a fussy wedding planner, or a brilliant psychologist (The Cell) for that matter. The story gives her plenty of opportunity to show off her buff, powerful, compact body and smoldering, eloquent face — yes, it’s true, she looks riveting from any angle. But most of the showy “acting” in her part, with plenty of chance for tears and rage, involves a hugely annoying subplot involving her gruff, tough-guy papa (Victor Argo) who has brutally abused her long-suffering mama (Sonia Braga), and her similarly abusive big brother, who carries on the family tradition by ruthlessly bashing his own glamorous wife.
The charisma of the two leads makes the movie watchable as it stumbles aimlessly through its overly generous running time, heading inevitably to the maddening semi-trick ending like a big, gas-guzzling, chrome-weighted luxury car rumbling on cruise control toward a major cliff. At midpoint in the movie you definitely care enough about these people to want to see how their story turns out, but by movie’s end you feel let down that you stayed to learn the truth.
Rated R, for some intense violence, much street language, and one creatively choreographed scene of intense sex and partial nudity. TWO STARS.
