One of John Woo’s more (only?) successful Hollywood entries, made after he had wowed the world with Hong Kong gangster films like The Killer, Face/Off applies Woo’s rhapsodic action style to a giddily goofy science-fiction concept. In Mike Werb and Michael Colleary’s script, FBI agent Sean Archer (John Travolta) undergoes facial transplant surgery, donning the visage of captured terrorist-for-hire Castor Troy (Nicolas Cage) in order to infiltrate Troy’s criminal network and thwart his latest plot. Things get even more complicated when Troy wakes up in the lab, grabs Archer’s face from a jar, and starts posing as him at home and work. The movie has no idea what to do with the moral implications (though it especially enjoys toying with the sexual threat Troy-as-Archer poses to the lawman’s wife and daughter, played by Joan Allen and Dominique Swain, respectively). Meanwhile, Woo’s signature touches (the diving gunmen, the slow-motion, the doves) begin to wear thin, especially in this American context. But there’s no denying that Cage and Travolta are having a blast with what is essentially an acting thought experiment. They’re both fantastic. Notice how, in the early scenes, Travolta sets himself up by giving a volatile edge to the “real” Sean Archer, well before the face swap. And as Troy (posing as Archer), he has a dynamite moment dressing down an imprisoned Archer (posing as Troy) that dances affectionately on the edge of spoof (while still sprinkling in some Travoltaisms). As for Cage—who at this point in his career was the acting equivalent of Hong Kong gangster cinema, i.e. explosively earnest—he delivers the fireworks, but also digs deeply into Archer’s existential distress, lending the film more pathos than the screenplay probably deserves.
(4/14/2022)
