Amazon.com video review:
At his best, director John Woo turns action movies into ballets
of blood and bullets grounded in character drama. Face/Off marks
Woo's first
American film to reach the pitched level of his best Hong Kong work (Hard-Boiled). He takes
a patently absurd premise--hero and
villain exchange identities by literally swapping faces in science-fiction
plastic surgery--and creates a double-barreled revenge film driven by the split
psyches of its newly redefined characters. FBI agent Sean Archer (John
Travolta) must play
the villain to move through the underworld while psychotic terrorist Castor
Troy (Nicolas Cage) becomes a perversely paternal family man while using
every tool at his
disposal to destroy his nemesis. Travolta vamps Cage's tics and
flamboyant excess with the grace of a dancer after his transformation from
cop to criminal, while Cage plays the sullen, bottled-up agent
excruciatingly trapped behind the face of the man who killed his son. His
attempts to live up to the terrorist's reputation become cathartic
explosions of violence that both thrill and terrify him. This is merely
icing on the cake for action fans, the dramatic backbone for some of the
most visceral action thrills ever. Woo
fills the screen with one show-stopping set piece after another, bringing a
poetic grace to the action freakout with sweeping camerawork and
sophisticated editing. This marriage of melodrama and mayhem ups the ante
from cops-and-robbers clichés to a conflict of near-mythic levels. --Sean
Axmaker
Amazon.com video review:
At his best, director John Woo turns action movies into ballets
of blood and bullets grounded in character drama. Face/Off marks
Woo's first
American film to reach the pitched level of his best Hong Kong
work (Hard-Boiled). He takes
a patently absurd premise--hero and
villain exchange identities by literally swapping faces in science-fiction
plastic surgery--and creates a double-barreled revenge film driven by the split
psyches of its newly redefined characters. FBI agent Sean Archer (John
Travolta) must play
the villain to move through the underworld while psychotic terrorist Castor
Troy (Nicolas Cage) becomes a perversely paternal family man while using
every tool at his
disposal to destroy his nemesis. Travolta vamps Cage's tics and
flamboyant excess with the grace of a dancer after his transformation from
cop to criminal, while Cage plays the sullen, bottled-up agent
excruciatingly trapped behind the face of the man who killed his son. His
attempts to live up to the terrorist's reputation become cathartic
explosions of violence that both thrill and terrify him. This is merely
icing on the cake for action fans, the dramatic backbone for some of the
most visceral action thrills ever. Woo
fills the screen with one show-stopping set piece after another, bringing a
poetic grace to the action freakout with sweeping camerawork and
sophisticated editing. This marriage of melodrama and mayhem ups the ante
from cops-and-robbers clichés to a conflict of near-mythic levels. --Sean Axmaker
