#20: Face/Off
Release Date: June 27th, 1997
Format: Streaming (Plex)
Written by: Michael Colleary and Mike Werb
Directed by: John Woo
4 Stars
Every time I watch Face/Off, which has been several times over the past 25 years plus, I’m still amazed by how unbelievably unrelenting it is. It nevers stops. It’s as if every single person involved in the production was absolutely confident in how good this project was, so they don’t want to waste a second of screen time not entertaining you.
This confidence that is imbued into the production, from the script to the performances to John Woo’s direction (especially Woo’s direction), gives the viewer no choice but to appreciate what is happening on screen. And it’s pretty incredible that this confidence exists at all, because the story, in the words of Maude Lebowski, is ludicrous.
Here’s my attempt to capture this plot (first, a quick tip of the cap to the screenwriters, Michael Colleary and Mike Werb, who must have had a circus-like elevator pitch when they tried to explain this madness to studio execs without them buzzing their receptionists to please see Mr. Colleary and Mr. Werb back to the lobby):
FBI agent Sean Archer survives an assassination attempt by terrorist Castor Troy (oh, by the way, this all happens in the first 30 seconds of the movie), but Archer’s son is hit by the bullet and dies. After his son’s murder, Archer dedicates his life to vengeance. Eventually he captures Troy, but only after Troy and his smarmy little brother have hidden a bomb somewhere in Los Angeles.
The script’s idea for finding the bomb?
Using a cutting edge surgical procedure, doctors will remove the faces of Archer and Troy and put Troy’s face on Archer so that Archer, now looking like Troy, can go undercover in a maximum security prison to get details from his brother about the location of the hidden bomb. Once undercover-Archer (looking like Troy) is in prison, the real Troy (sans face) wakes up from his medically-induced coma, kidnaps the plastic surgeon, and forces him to put Archer’s face on him. Then Troy, now looking like Archer, kills the surgeon and everyone else that has knowledge of the undercover operation. Now the real Archer, who looks like Troy, must break out of prison in order to stop the real Troy, who looks like Archer.
It’s a bananas script idea. After Face/Off, Colleary and Werb went on to write for TV and kid’s projects nobody has ever heard of. Prior to Face/Off, weirdly enough, Mike Werb also wrote the script for The Mask. Judging by his only two major writing credits, The Mask and Face/Off, he was obviously intrigued by the idea of identity and face removal. Kind of strange.
So why is everybody in this production so damn confident in a script from two pretty hacky writers with a pretty stupid plot? I really don’t know. Maybe from working off of such a bizarre idea, everyone involved has no choice but to lean into the madness.
John Woo certainly leans in. There is plenty of his signature “bullet ballet” in Face/Off, but he attacks dramatic scenes like they’re action scenes as well. The camera and music is kept at a constant crescendo, but he deftly navigates the story in a way that doesn’t exhaust or annoy the audience. He’s an F1 driver who never dips below 100 miles per hour, but there are subtle gear shifts and turn entries that keep the viewer from flying out of the car. It’s one of my favorite directed action movies ever.
And Woo gets lead performances to match. Right time, right place for both Travolta and Cage in regards to where they were in their careers. For Travolta, he’s at the peak of his post-Pulp Fiction career resurgence and seems ecstatic to once again be in a big budget movie. For Cage, he’s at his absolute pinnacle as a performer and commercial action star in 1997. I had forgotten that Con Air and Face/Off were in theaters at the same time in the summer of 1997. Incredible. And he had just done The Rock the summer before. It’s in the running for the greatest mainstream 3-movie run in movie history for a lead actor.
This is an easy 4-star for me. For what it’s worth, it doesn’t make any sense that this wasn’t a huge pile of shit that lost a ton of money at the box office. It has all the markers of a really bad movie. But it also has the singular vision and confidence of a great movie, and it just works even if it doesn’t make any sense on any level.
