Film Notes: Face/Off

Come see Face/Off with us on 35 mm at the Paramount Theatre.

If you move to Hollywood, you may as well shoot for the stars... and the highly ambitious FACE/OFF is no exception. In 1993, director John Woo emigrated from Hong Kong to the United States, signaling a new chapter in the filmography of an already extremely accomplished artist. Having pioneered the dual-wielding, bullet-riddled “gun fu” style as well as the chivalry-bound “heroic bloodshed” subgenre, Woo’s classic films A BETTER TOMORROW, THE KILLER, and HARD BOILED were more than enough to cement him a place in action movie history. But California held new opportunities – both creative and financial – and Woo found himself on the payroll and at the mercy of Universal Studios.

His first production, the Jean-Claude Van Damme “Most Dangerous Game” riff HARD TARGET, was plagued by studio interference and forcibly re-edited down to an R rating outside of Woo’s supervision. After three years away, Woo returned for the chase film BROKEN ARROW, in which a rogue Air Force Major heists a cache of nuclear weapons. Though once again subject to studio meddling and mixed critical reviews, there was a distinct, large-chinned light in BROKEN ARROWs murk: John Travolta, playing against type in his post-PULP FICTION career revival and going for broke as the evil military opportunist. Woo’s experience with this seminal ham would lead to Travolta’s casting in his next picture; a Paramount-funded project with more money and more creative freedom: FACE/OFF.

Following the entanglement of two men with a grudge – an FBI agent and the notorious terrorist who murdered his son – FACE/OFF finds Woo’s obsessions of honor and identity taken to the extreme, as the two men literally swap both faces and lives to entrap each other. And though Woo found the role of a grief-stricken lawman turned strutting slimeball in Travolta, he needed someone equally seismic to play the unrepentant terrorist turned conflicted infiltrating agent. That man would be another hot commodity, a big performer on an unbelievable streak of action hits with THE ROCK and CON AIR: Nicolas Cage.

While FACE/OFF undeniably showcases John Woo at a stylistic peak, it's hard to deny much of the film’s enduring appeal stems from the showdown between two of Hollywood’s biggest personalities, constantly attempting to one-up each other for the world’s most unhinged performance. Cage does his best Travolta impression, Travolta does his best… Travolta impression, and the whole thing wraps up in an absurd, seen-to-be-believed maximal package of sci-fi prisons and flying doves and boat chases and plane chases and gold guns and whatever else Woo can throw at the screen. This is a zone where reality as we know it does not exist – simply the world of a go-big director and two go-big performers, resonating in perfect lockstep and eviscerating the limits of subtlety and restraint to create an expressionist action classic, imbued with all the heightened drama of Woo’s heroic bloodshed cinema. As one character pleads near the film’s conclusion, “please tell me what planet I'm on!”

Only one way to find out.