Angel Eyes

It’s a pity that director Luis Mandoki occasionally tilts his camera to express a kind of overblown rhetoric, and that the movie misses golden opportunitiesthe traumatized hero once worked as a jazz trumpeterto work in the lovely Matt Dennis ballad it’s named after. But this touching love story essentially belongs to its stars, Jennifer Lopez as a Chicago cop and Jim Caviezel (The Thin Red Line) as the former trumpeter, and the rough spots are easy enough to get past while spending time with them. Lopez and Caviezel play armored characters who’ve essentially lost their families (in very different ways), and the sincerity of their performances overrides the intermittent implausibilities of Gerald Di Pego’s script. The backup castin particular Terrence Howard and Shirley Knightis equally fine; with Sonia Braga, Jeremy Sisto, and Victor Argo. 107 min. (JR) Read more