EYES OF AN ANGEL loads the bases with a cute kid, a plucky wounded dog, and John Travolta's killer baby blues, but it still can't manage to score. Oddly seedy for a family picture, it's as if the filmmakers somehow conflated PULP FICTION with THE INCREDIBLE JOURNEY.
Bobby (John Travolta) is an ex-con and lowlife loser on the periphery of the Chicago mob who was once married to the sister of local drug kingpin Cissy, a.k.a. Francisco (musician Tito Larriva, of the LA bands the Plugz and the Cruzados). Bobby's wife died some time ago, leaving him in custody
of a young daughter (Ellie Raab) and in an uneasy truce with the turbulent Cissy, who exhibits a proprietary concern for his niece. Seeking to go straight and open a chain of dry cleaning outlets, Bobby begs Cissy for the chance to start building his nest egg, and Cissy sets him up as a bagman for
protection money collected from storefront merchants. Bobby, a reformed alcoholic, tries to live down his reputation, making his rounds promptly and by the book. But then Cissy decides to make him sweat, and orders his chief goon (Richard Edson) to tell Bobby that he was several thousand dollars
short on one of his pickups. When Bobby's car is stolen with the night's receipts still in the trunk, he decides to cut his losses and heads for LA with his daughter.
In a parallel story, a formerly vicious Doberman from one of Cissy's dogfighting parlors has lost its commercial value and is dumped on the scrap heap. The dog drags itself to an abandoned warehouse where Bobby's daughter happens to find it. Befriending it over time, she nurses it back to
health, and tries to persuade Bobby to let her keep it. But Bobby trundles them off to LA instead. The Doberman sets out after them on a cross-country trek, while Bobby's daughter does her best to leave a makeshift trail.
In LA, Bobby swallows his pride and looks up his estranged brother, Georgie (Jeffrey DeMunn), to beg for a place to stay, but relations between them quickly sour. When Cissy and his henchmen show up at Georgie's, taking the daughter more or less hostage, Bobby hits bottom and resumes drinking.
Just then, the Doberman hits town, sniffing him out of the skid row gutter he's melted into and leading him back to his daughter. As a final comeuppance, the Doberman recognizes Cissy and does what he's been trained to do, thus saving the day.
EYES OF AN ANGEL, directed by Robert Harmon (THE HITCHER), was actually shot in 1989 under the title THE TENDER. This Paramount project, executive produced by actor Michael Douglas and Michael Phillips (TAXI DRIVER, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS), was plucked off the shelf for home video release, presumably
to capitalize on Travolta's renewed popularity in the wake of PULP FICTION. It's not hard to see why Paramount lost faith in this misconceived genre hybrid: its vapid moral is expressed through one of the silliest parallelisms in recent memory--much-abused lush and mistreated pooch find redemption
through love. It's of interest only as a reminder of the depths to which the formidably talented Travolta had sunk before Quentin Tarantino rescued him from direct-to-video land. Joe Camp, the man behind the BENJI franchise, serves as dog trainer and stunt double. (Violence, adult situations,
substance abuse, profanity.) leave a comment
