FACE/OFF (1997) A film review by Nick Schaden Copyright 1997 Nick Schaden
"Face/Off" is the story of Sean Archer (John Travolta), a member of an elite secret FBI team attempting to hunt down and catch Castor Troy (Nicholas Cage), one really vile and over the top terrorist (of course, who ISN'T in today's action movies). In the opening of the movie we watch as Sean gets nailed from Castor Troy with a sniper's bullet. Unfortunately, while Sean barely survives the attack, his son doesn't, and thus sets Sean on a life-long pursuit after the evil Castor.
Normal action movie right? Wrong. Flashy action director John Woo (somewhat unsuccessfully) throws the audience a curveball. To better infiltrate Castor's crime syndicate, mainly in attempt to stop a bomb going off in the middle of LA, Sean uses "modern day technology". What technology you ask? It's not just rubber noses: Sean literally exchanges his own face with the face of Castor (who at this point has been brought into justice and is resting peacefully in a coma). Sound moderately corny? It is, and no matter how many special effects John Woo brings into the mix, the switch still seems awkward to me.
While this is in some ways a pitfall of the movie, fortunately it turns around to make the movie more enjoyable. As suspected, Castor gets out of the coma, and takes the original face of Sean Archer. Thus for the majority of the movie, you have literal role reversals, Sean appears to be Castor, and vice versa. More importantly however, the audience gets to see John Travolta acting like the wild Nicholas Cage we've come to love, and Cage play the more straight-shooting Travolta. You can see the actors are having a good time in their roles, and the actors play wonderfully off each other.
Now the real question: how's the ACTION? Fortunately, it's the other major strength of the movie, with incredibly original sequences, from speed boats to planes on runways. John Woo is a master at this art, and succeeds in creating exciting and invigorating shoot outs. On that same note however, I was disappointed in that what I believed to be the best action sequence - where Sean is attempting to intercept Castor at the airport - is the first sequence of the movie! Consequently, while the movie opened with a bang, I was a little let down by the remaining action sequences. And on a minor point, while most of the slow motion touches are nice, Mr. Woo seems to be a little too obsessed with this movie making quality.
All in all, if you allow yourself to be wrapped up in Face/Off's vortex, you may look back at a few parts (the face swapping scene comes instantly to my mind) with skepticism, but you'll certainly enjoy the two hour ride.
Nick's Rating: + 2 (Recommended)
*** Rating scale goes from -4 (worst) to +4 (best). 0 = Average rating *** -- Nick Schaden E mail comments to: cpunut@uslink.net Check out all of Nick's reviews at: http://uslink.net/~cpunut/movies.html
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