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| Major stars Nicholas Cage and John Travolta seem to melt together on this sparse poster for John Woo's Face/Off |
The mad terrorist Castor Troy assassinated FBI agent Sean Archer's son some years in the past. As Archer finally brings the lunatic in, he is a vegetable. - In order to prevent Troy's also mad brother Pollux from bombing Los Angeles, Archer undergoes surgery in order to 'attain' Castor's face and body. - But complications arise, when Castor escapes his coma!
Face/Off is written by Mike Werb (The Mask (1994)) and Michael Colleary (Firehouse Dog (2007)) and directed by great Chinese filmmaker John Woo (Mission: Impossible II (2000)). As is obvious from the story summary above, it runs on a very silly plot with incredibly unlikely elements, to put it mildly.
First of all, Face/Off is a major star vehicle action movie, and John Travolta (White Man's Burden (1995)) and Nicolas Cage (Ghost Rider (2007)) both overplay their wild-mannered, identity-swapping characters eminently, which suits the ludicrousness of the film perfectly.
Woo wrangles his biggest production yet here, and he makes his loud but elegant brand of action work as high-end mainstream Hollywood fare. It is a crazy jaw buster of a movie, but in my book his next major Hollywood actioner, Mission: Impossible II is a more thrilling and satisfying film.
Watch a trailer for the film from a VHS here
Cost: 80 mil. $
Box office: 245.6 mil. $
= Box office success (3.07 times the cost)
[Face/Off premiered 19 June (Westwood, Los Angeles) and runs 138 minutes. Werb and Colleary were trying to sell their spec script in 1990. The first package included Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone in the two leads. Shooting took place in California, including Los Angeles and San Diego. The film opened #1 to a 23.3 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it spent another 3 weeks in the top 5 (#2-#3-#5) and grossed 112.2 mil. $ (45.7 % of the total gross). It was the 11th highest-grossing film of the year in North America, and the 14th highest-grossing globally. Roger Ebert gave the film a 3/4 star review, translating to a notch better than this review. The film was nominated for an Oscar for Sound Editing, which it lost to masterpiece Titanic (1997). Woo returned with Dolph Lundgren-starring TV movie Blackjack (1998) and theatrically with great actioner Mission: Impossible II (2000). Travolta returned in Mad City (1997), Cage in City of Angels (1998). Face/Off is certified fresh at 92 % with a 7.9 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]
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