This is John Woo's third film in America. He's the supreme Hong Kong action film directory, best known for a certain balletic violence. Dead-eyed men with unlimited ammunition shoot at each other in a landscape of easily shattered glass and pottery. In slow motion. Amid doves and billowing sheets. Usually with choir music in the background, or with silences amplifying the sound of spent shells hitting the ground. No, really, I think this is terrific, just easy to get carried away with, and easy to mock when that happens.
The problem with Woo's first American film, "Hard Target", was that Van Damme was in it. There are flashes of the Woo style, but they're overwhelmed by the Van Damme-ness of the exercise. "Do not hunt what you cannot kill", spoken in that thick Flemish accent of his. The second film, "Broken Arrow", was less restrained, much more exuberent. I remember a review noted that the reason there wree two nuclear bombs in the movie was so that Woo would have a chance of blowing up one of them somehere in the middle. And that wouldn't be the most spectacular piece of action film making. This movie was an improvement over the Van Damme film, but the occassional moments when Woo had his trademark scenes felt forced, and easily mocked: Travolta, too cool for this world, lighting a cigarette in slow motion, walking away from an explosion while doing so, synth music filling the air. And there wasn't enough glass to shoot out in the movie, not enough vases to shatter. The movie takes place in a desert, after all.
In the first 15 minutes of "Face Off", there was a serious danger of Woo's trademarks being overused. The shot with Nicholas Cage getting out of the car at the airport in slow mo, the wind whipping up his long coat, too cool for words, as the worst of them. But the film picked up after these first gaffes. The Woo signature shots were more understated, not really calling attention to themselves. Yes, there was the bit near the end, with white doves and billowing white curtains, but that felt appropriate.
The plot of the movie is a bit like "The Prince and the Pauper", I suppose. The bad guy and the good guy switch places, and live each other's lives for a while. But don't pay too much attention to the plot (which isn't half bad), and ignore the small facts about establishing identity in the modern world. Too much attention to that and the problems of carrying around that much ammo will get in the way of virtuoso action film making. There are Mexican standoffs (Though nothing will touch the Mexican standoff from "The Killer", when the men have their guns trained at each other's heads, and a blind girl is trying to serve them tea, unaware of the lurking violence. They circle through a small apartment, 9mm and tea service in hand. The glory of this scene is that it was damn funny -- Woo seems to have become less funny, actually, though after working with the less-than-humorous Van Damme who can blame him? -- and has a certain, "Can you top this?" feel too it, as he extends to scene for more minutes than you think he possibly could.), lots of glass being broken in slow motion, a fair bit of jump-to-one-side-a-gun-in-each-hand shooting (in slow motion), and a speed boat sequence that suggests Woo may miss Victoria Harbor (not in slow motion, except the explosion at the end). The most inspired moment is in the gangster's penthouse, just after Travolta says, "I guess we'll just have to kill each other." I won't spoil it, like some of the TV commercials spoiled it, but it was inspired.
In any case, the new Jackie Chan movie will be out in a couple of weeks. He's clearly survived the Mountain Dew commercial, so who wants to catch this on openning night?
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