Face/Off (1997) Review: Two Stars, Swapped and Unleashed

Is Face/Off worth watching?

Yes, if you can take it on its own outrageous terms. Face/Off is peak 1990s Hollywood excess, a ridiculous premise played with total conviction, and John Woo’s operatic action and two gleefully unhinged star performances make it enormous fun. The film is at its best when its leads are imitating each other and Woo is choreographing chaos. The reservations are its absurd science, a few scenes that play as unintentional comedy, and a running time that stretches well past what the story needs.

What is Face/Off about?

FBI agent Sean Archer (John Travolta) has spent years hunting Castor Troy (Nicolas Cage), the flamboyant terrorist who killed his young son. When Troy is finally captured and left in a coma, Archer learns that a deadly bomb has been hidden somewhere in Los Angeles, and the only person who knows where is Troy’s brother, Pollux (Alessandro Nivola), now in a maximum-security prison. To get the information, Archer agrees to experimental surgery that gives him Troy’s face and voice so he can go undercover. The plan goes badly wrong when the real Troy wakes up and takes Archer’s identity for himself.

Joan Allen plays Archer’s wife, Eve, with Gina Gershon and Dominique Swain in key supporting roles. Face/Off is directed by John Woo, an American production in English that runs 139 minutes.

Travolta and Cage play each other

The film’s great joy is watching its two stars trade roles. For the opening act, Travolta is the tormented lawman and Cage the preening psychopath; after the swap, each has to play the other, and both seize the chance to go big. Travolta clearly relishes playing a villain inside a good man’s life, strutting through Archer’s family and workplace with obscene delight, while Cage is surprisingly affecting as a decent man trapped behind a monster’s face.

It is a strange, thrilling double act, and it gives the film a hook beyond its action. The performances are pitched high, sometimes into camp, but the actors commit so fully that the absurdity becomes part of the pleasure. Joan Allen, meanwhile, grounds the domestic scenes with a serious performance that keeps the melodrama from floating away.

John Woo’s Hollywood opera

Woo brings the style he perfected in Hong Kong to its biggest American canvas. The action sequences are balletic and extravagant: slow-motion gunfights, flying doves, characters leaping sideways with a pistol in each hand, and the Mexican standoff as a recurring motif. A shootout set to a gentle rendition of “Over the Rainbow” is one of the most memorable and surreal set pieces of the decade.

Woo also understands that the identity-swap story is a melodrama at heart, a film about fathers, families and the fear of becoming your enemy. The emotional register is as heightened as the gunplay, which will strike some viewers as sincere and others as silly.

Where the excess becomes too much

At 139 minutes, Face/Off is too long for its story. Stretches of the middle hour and the final act both drag, and the film piles climax upon climax until the spectacle starts to numb. The science behind the face transplant is, of course, nonsense, and while the film wisely does not dwell on it, some dialogue and plot turns are so broad that they tip into unintended comedy. This is not a film for anyone who needs their action to make sense.

Who should watch Face/Off?

It is essential viewing for fans of 1990s action cinema, admirers of John Woo’s style, and anyone who enjoys Nicolas Cage at his most extravagant. It works best with an audience and a willingness to laugh along with it. The violence is heavy and frequent, with many shootings and some brutal fights, and there is strong language throughout; it is suitable for older teenagers and adults.

If you want more of Woo’s gunplay:

• The Killer, the Hong Kong masterpiece that defined his style of heroic, heartfelt bloodshed.
• Hard Boiled, his final Hong Kong film and arguably the most spectacular action movie he ever made.
• Mission: Impossible II, Woo’s next big Hollywood blockbuster, which also plays with masks and stolen identities.

The verdict

Face/Off is an overlong, preposterous and frequently brilliant action movie, a perfect storm of John Woo’s operatic style and two stars happily chewing through each other’s personas. It never quite knows when to stop, but its audacity and invention make it one of the most entertaining blockbusters of its era.

Rating: 3.5/5