I felt cheated. Why was this advertised as a supernatural thriller?

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it just seemed this way to me. After the lights came up, I asked my friend this and he didn't know what I was talking about. He thought the film was pretty much what it was advertised as being. I read some professional film critics reviews though, and saw that I wasn't the only one who thought the movies trailers and advertisements made it look like there might be a real angel involved.

One of the lead characters is played by Jim Caviezel, and is named Catch in the film. He is referred to as a 'ghost' by one of Lopez' partners. He practically is. He seems to appear whenever needed, helping people in need. He reminded me greatly of the Angel Nicholas Cage played in "City of Angels". Not only does he look and dress a little like him, but also it looks like we are watching him as he wanders the earth helping people. There is another scene where he tells us that a dog told him that his name was Bob, which reminded me of that great scene from "City" when Cage tells Meg Ryan that her dog told him its name, and that he loves it when she smiles, and is worried that she never seems to sleep.

Caviezel's acting job is a difficult one here. He seems to play it almost too low-key for what his emotional state should be making him act like. We never quite know what he is thinking throughout the first two thirds of the film, and his surroundings don't seem to help. We see him look at a neighbor's kid and we don't know why. We see him helping virtual strangers, and we don't know why. When he picks up a trumpet and plays it in a jazz bar, it is obvious that he is remembering something horrible from the past, but even at the end of the picture we aren't sure why he chose that particular piece after so long an absence from playing.

The other lead character is played by Jennifer Lopez. Lopez and Jim Caviezel think they may be strangers after an encounter where they meet for a 'dinner date' after Caviezel may have just saved her life. They aren't strangers, although neither of them particularly remembers each other.

They have both lost their families, but in much different ways. It turns out that he lost his family in an accident that was somewhat his fault. Lopez has lost her family in a much more subtle way. She found it necessary to arrest her father years earlier for abusing her mother. This drove an obvious chasm between she and her father, who rather than admit he may have been wrong would rather pretend that he no longer has a daughter. Her mother, perhaps still fearful of the father, defends her father, although is probably somewhat glad that Lopez did what she did since she says the abuse doesn't happen anymore. Her mother tells Lopez that she broke some sort of a family trust. I think Lopez didn't want to belong to a family where that sort of 'trust' needs to exist.

Her brother doesn't like the fact that she brought some shame to the family, and seems bothered by the fact that she is a cop. He tells her not to come by his work place since she makes it look like someone is in trouble. When it turns out that he is a spousal abuser too, they literally come to blows over who has the bigger problem.

She has obviously been scarred by her father, but is not willing to back down. She strikes me as the kind of character that enjoys charging headfirst into any conflict, and when her father doesn't want to talk to her, she initially responds as if this is a challenge. The way she avoids these conflicts is by not letting anyone else get close enough to her to become a challenge. In one scene she tells a character that she doesn't let anyone into her apartment, but we can tell that she probably meant to say into her life.

There is some very good dialogue in the film. Not consistently, but there are very good scenes. The movie starts with Lopez telling a date that when people she meets find out that she is a cop, they first always want to know if she ever killed anyone. She wonders why she never gets asked if she has ever saved anyone. Another well done scene has Lopez asking Catch if he could hang up the phone and let the answering machine pick it up. She feels more comfortable saying certain things that way.

Some other good dialogue comes from a character who didn't get enough screen time. This is Lopez' partner. We get one or two scenes where he says some potent things about Lopez' behavior, which let us know that he knows her possibly better than she knows herself. We also see the subtle ways that he tries to protect her, but knowing that if he ever made it obvious, she would resent him for it. One great scene has him telling her that he has a child coming and that she needs to get back to work with him so that they can make the streets safe for his soon to be born child.

The story does offer surprises that I wouldn't have seen coming, even if I had known what type of film this was going to be. Some of Catch's behavior that we don't understand gains more meaning as the story progresses. One example is where one lady we see him repeatedly help appears to be just another random act of kindness, but is later discovered to have been his mother-in-law, and the only other surviving passenger of the car he was driving.

Even though both these people seem to have lost their families in different ways, they do seem to follow down the same path. This loss may be all that holds them together as a couple at first, but it is clear that they are very different losses. Lopez could regain her family. Catch can only regain his sense of comfort with the loss. Lopez' final scenes with the family are not what your traditional film would have given us, and are a clever surprise, if somewhat non-conclusive. Watching Catch 'wake up' to his loss did not work for me at all as well as Lopez' closure.

The movie did everything I think it tried to accomplish, but it just didn't satisfy me. I'm hoping that this was just because I mistakenly felt that there was something more supernatural going on with it. However, I don't think that is it. I should be impressed that the conflict between Lopez and her father didn't resolve the issues in a soap opera way, but I'm not. Each character's speech at the end just didn't work for me. And their final speech together didn't either.

The movie just failed to conclude itself properly, and I can't describe exactly why.


Note that on my own review page I gave this film 2˝ stars!





Recommended:
No

Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older