For some, life is one ongoing recovery process where there’s no real end. It’s just a matter of degree.

  Luis Mandoki’s lead characters in Angel Eyes, which is not nearly as mysterious as it purports itself to be, are people like this. They have suffered the kind of pain that doesn’t ever truly go away. The trick is to recover just enough to be able to face the future with some kind of hope. And it’s one neat trick if you can pull it off. Though filled with missteps here and there, Angel Eyes show how ordinary people face extraordinary pain and somehow muddle on through.

  The beauty, both literally and figuratively, of Angel Eyes is in its lead characters and the actors who portray them. For in Jennifer Lopez (as an embittered Chicago cop) and James Caviezel (as a car-crash survivor), we have people we can believe in, even as they’re falling in love. With Lopez, of course, we’re asked to believe a lot. She is, after all, Jennifer Lopez, the hottest actress in Hollywood right now, flush with sex appeal, burgeoning star power and one serious career arc. With Caviezel, we’re asked to revisit an actor who’s on familiar ground. With Mandoki’s help, Lopez and Caviezel forge a subtle chemistry that’s refreshing in today’s world of overdone filmmaking.

  Lopez as a cop? Lopez as damaged goods? She, Caviezel and Mandoki make it happen, taking Gerald DiPego’s script and making believability a necessary component to this film. Whether she’s staring off into the distance (even when looking straight at people) or raging with anger, Lopez’s Sharon Pogue could be many of us – she just happens to be drop-dead gorgeous. Pogue suffered through an abusive childhood where, more than anything else, she had to watch her father (Alfonso Arau) beat her mother and her brother jump to the family’s defense. "In all those years, my Dad never hurt me," she tells Caviezel’s Catch, who ponders the notion before replying, "Yes, he did."

  Catch is battling his own emotional detachment, haphazardly playing a Good Samaritan as he walks the city streets in his borderline homeless attire of pants, T-shirt and overcoat. He’s trying to survive more than the car crash that killed his wife and son, and even if we probably can figure it out early enough in the film for there to be little mystery, we’re still absorbed in his journey to work it all out and rejoin the human race.

  Of course, the implication is that he needs Sharon’s help, and their connection is one of the few moments of implied magical realism that Mandoki (gratefully) gives the film. Otherwise, he allows his characters to clumsily but earnestly flesh out the pain, and love, in each other to join forces and move forward.

  Caviezel’s been here before, playing similar characters in The Thin Red Line and Pay It Forward who seem to be searching for some elusive inner truth. He plays it well, his blue eyes burning through a chiseled face and mop of dark brown hair. If at first it doesn’t seem like he’s Lopez’s romantic equal, they both make their characters forge an awkward chemistry and they go about their tug-of-war that turns into a tentative love.

  It is the little moments that make Angel Eyes so watchable, not just Lopez’s sometimes-magical screen presence. (Prediction: She’ll win an Oscar within three years.) In one scene, Lopez almost robotically disrobes from yet another disappointing date and pulls on a bulletproof vest before falling onto her bed – a gentle gesture of symbolism on Mandoki’s part. In another scene early in their dysfunctional cat-and-mouse game, Catch abruptly walks out on Sharon (as if!) in response to her rudeness.

  And as Sharon comes to grips with her demons a little faster than Catch does, she receives a soft admonition from his mother-in-law when pressed for answers: "Why does everyone have to rush things these days?"

  There’s plenty to dismiss about Angel Eyes. Manoki sometimes forces the "fate" hand a little bit. And in a particularly strange transgression, Sharon notices when Catch stops suddenly in front of a jazz club and asks, "You like the blues?" The worst of all is a third-act capitulation to overwrought emotionalism that almost seeks to tear at everything that Mandoki has built to that point, with close-ups, tears, speeches and reconciliations coming at warp speed to muddle the film’s whole rhythm.

  But at least the resolutions remain true to the integrity of this film, leaving us as hopeful as Sharon and Catch that we even survive a little schmaltz in a film that means so well. .