Angel Eyes (2001)

Jennifer Lopez did a dance with the devil in the gruesomely imagistic ''The Cell,'' so I guess it qualifies as a stretch that in Angel Eyes, where she is once again cast as a tough babe cop, she flirts with the opposite end of the metaphysical spectrum. In Chicago, Lopez's Officer Sharon Pogue is rescued from an ambush by a mysterious stranger who continues to follow her around. Tall, dark, and unshaven, the winsome stalker, who calls himself Catch (Jim Caviezel), appears to mean well, but he's also monosyllabic and a bit creepy, like a rumpled, nice guy version of Norman Bates. We're meant to wonder whether he has been sent from, you know, up there. It gives away nothing to say that the movie, a cumbersome dud, grows draggier with each new revelation.

Lopez is a quick-minded and intuitive actress, but as she has honed her body and personality into that of an officially empowered pop superstar, she has never come close to displaying the fluky inner fire that she had in ''Out of Sight.'' Amid the sticky genre murk of ''Angel Eyes,'' she and Caviezel get to deliver one teary cathartic speech apiece, and we realize that regardless of who is or is not an angel, they're both playing saints. The two redeem each other, but Jennifer Lopez needs to be redeemed from trash like this.

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