 |
MOVIE REVIEW:
FACE/OFF
(1997)
DIRECTOR:
John Woo
STARRING:
Nicolas Cage, John Travolta, Joan Allen, Dominique Swain.
|
|
|
If you're into your action films and you haven't seen Face/Off you're either an extremely aggressive Budhist monk living in Tibet or you've already seen a John Woo film
and know you never need to see one again because they're all the same. With this being said, my review of Face/Off has just been deemed redundant. Nevertheless I love
to shove my opinions in people's faces, so I will push on.
As stated above, John Woo directed this fantastically frilly fright fest (in that John Travolta and Nicolas Cage are both hideous freaks of frightening nature. Plus
I really wanted to use alot of f's there - note: no use of 'fuck', oops I just ruined it) in 1997. It's full of John Woo's usual trademark gun play. People flying
about in the air with dual guns, slow motion "bullet time" FX and lots of people sliding while shooting in front/behind/to side of them. It's really cool, the first
time it's done or while you do it yourself as Max Payne in the Max Payne games. Fortunately, by the time Mission:Impossible II came out I think we'd all had about enough of John
Woo's fucking bullshit, which is why his last notable job in directing was a fucking video game not worthy of mention.
|
Face/Off tells the story of determined cop Sean Archer (played with usual expected scene chewing brutality by John Travolta) who is out for blood on respected and feared
mastermind criminal Castor Troy (played with usual horse-like insanity by Nicolas Cage) after he shoots and kills his son in a failed attempt at assasinating Sean himself.
Going by Castor's reputation and mastered art of shooting, I can only assume he was thrown off target, as he tried to kill himself with his sniper rile when he truly realised how fucking ridiculous he looks with a moustache.
So this sets the pace for the ongoing battle between Sean Archer and Castor Troy which leads to nothing but complete and utter insanity. Not the good kind of insanity either, more like the ludicrous type of insanity. The kind of insanity you find in the eyes of every family member who holds a garage sale every weekend. BUY OUR THINGS PEOPLE! SNIFF OUR UNDERWEAR! OUR LOVE IS YOUR LOVE! MMMMMMM! *drool*
|
|
^^ MY MOUSTACHE IS CRAZIER THAN ME!!!! MWAHAHA!. |
Sean is now a tight assed bastard of a cop, driven by a relentless thirst for revenge. His department manages to locate Castor Troy's whereabouts to the airport.
This comes after we are treated to a delightfully bizarre scene where Troy has set up a bomb in the Los Angeles Convention Centre. It's realised that he delights in his maniacal ways as we see him
singing in with a church choir and sexually assaulting one of the choir girls on his way to vacating the premises of said bomb. For some reason he sets a ridiculously long
time for the biological bomb to go off, as in a few days. This might have been explained at some point in the film but unfortunately I spent alot of time while watching this movie calculating how it is possible
for the universe and it's endless limits to sustain John Travolta and Nicolas Cage's existence given there is only so much oxygen, time and space for such large, planet eating,
oxygen vaccuuming heads. Perhaps some days those silly guys working on that silly partical collider will end their silly pursuits and get onto more serious topics like this.
Sean has an FBI agent on board Castor's plane which he is about to leave the country in, with his genius (and bomb designing) brother, Pollux (Alessandro Nivola). On take off they notice
a fuckload of police vehicles heading down the runway toward them and at this point the undercover agent figures what a GREAT time to expose herself an agent and hold the
two boys up. Great work, there's no way this PLANE that has the ability to FLY will outrun those TERRAIN ONLY VEHICLES. They despatch of her quickly because she's not important
to the progression of the movie and after some crazy (and very much against the book) law work from Sean, the plane crashes into an airliner workshop.
|
 |
After lots of people flying about in the air with dual guns, lots of cool gun play and lots of unimportant characters dying, Sean manages to chase Castor Troy down in a wind tunnel
in the airliner jet workshop. Using a jet engine that is being worked on (although I would have assumed it wouldn't have had a fuel source or been working if it was in the workshop
and not mounted to a plane) Sean sends Troy flying through the air (shock! MORE people flying around) and down the wind tunnel, thus knocking him into a coma when he hits a grated wall at the end of
the wind tunnel.
Amongst the wreckage of Castor's plane they find a very old-school looking 3.5 floppy disc that has details of a bomb that is going to go off after so many days. They don't ask
why it's going to go off after only a certain amount of time and they also don't ask why Castor & Pollux went to the effort of making an animated interface to the countdown with nice
graphics and sounds. Who cares!?
|
With a haircut like that what women WOULDN'T want Castor!? ^^
|
Anyway, Sean is pissed off because he thought it was all over. Sean is so pissed off in fact that when his co-workers applaude the final capture (and what
he thinks is the death) of his arch nemesis, all he can do is get shitty at them, angry over the lives of police lost in doing this.
Some genius types come up with the idea of Sean trading faces with Troy so he can go undercover and find out the location of the bomb from Pollux, because guess what, CASTOR TROY IS STILL ALIVE, much to Sean's dismay. He doesn't want to do it. Why? Because
TRADING FACES WITH SOMEONE IS FUCKING INSANE, not to mention impossible. But in the world of Face/Off, anything is possible, especially things like-
1.) Aiming duel guns at a target with succession while flying in the air or sliding on the ground,
2.) Confronting a plane on a run way with a convoy of police vehciles at an LA airport.
3.) John Travolta and Nicolas Cage being in the same vicinity of one another without bashing their heads together constantly.
4.) Nicolas Cage being attractive to women.
5.) John Travolta not eating for more than half an hour.
6.) Being able to seemlessly trade faces, hair type, vocal patterns and body types without scarring of any sort.
Anyway, Sean decides to do it because he's fucking awesome (not to mention hungry and this damn meeting is keeping him from lunch). He tells his wife (Joan Allen - looking like
ET with curly hair as always) some cockamamy story because he promised her once Castor was dead that'd he be around more often. Nobody else on the force knows of this whole
crazy operation except a select few and the doctor in charge who you would think would want more notoriety for being such a fucking genius. Alas, the operation happens.
We are treated to a scene which has aged terribly in the last decade of the face trading, body type matching and hair transplanting (should we even get into how many hair plug jokes this could lead
to considering the two actors in this scene both clearly use the "advatnages" of hair plugs on a daily basis?). Time passes (as in a few hours) and the operation is successful
and Sean doesn't even feel any pain. Except for the pain he carries inside for now looking like his arch nemesis, CASTOR TROY! They implant some vocal recognition device
bullshit in his throat and just like that he sounds like his arch nemesis, CASTOR TROY! It's all so easy, SEE?
It's announced Castor Troy is still alive, even those he is in fact Sean, so he is carted off to a maximum security prison. At this prison, security consists of magnetic boots
keeping people firmly planted to the ground, the traditional guards concept and not to mention that the prison is in fact an oil rig. It's not too long before Castor is involved
in a fight and Sean must ensure he plays up Castor's mean streak through and through. This gives him even more pain inside. Shit, this is deep.
Troy awakens from his coma (I'm pretty sure it's explained that it's due to pain of the face removal, but one would also conclude that the doctor's would be aware of this
happening and ensure Castor was put under some type of drug to ensure no awakening from his coma) and he's pissed off, because he doesn't have a face. In Nicolas Cage's case,
this may not be such a bad thing. It's kind of like just having an ugly wart removed or something. Oh wait, it's still pretty bad though, because they're going to have to give
him JOHN TRAVOLTA'S FACE. Fuck, that's kind of like returning a daggy skivvy for a pair of stretched flares ey? He will also have to have countless pounds of fat added to his body to match
that of Travolta's and have a buzzing fly rammed into his throat to match his voice to that of Volts's often breaking voice.
|
After this surgery Castor Troy kills everyone involved in the top secret operation and takes no time in jumping into Sean's life. First stop, go visit Sean in prison. We are
treated to a funny moment in the confrontation where even Castor Troy proclaims it's no easy feat having a mug like Sean's, claiming his chin is "ridiculous". Of course Sean
has a nervous breakdown inside because he's totally fucked and as far as everyone knows, he IS Castor Troy.
Castor wreaks havoc in Sean's life in the sense that he totally ruins Sean's hard earned reputation of being a total cunt and let's loose for a bit. He devises a scheme with
his brother, who he contacts through setting up "questioning" sessions with him (with mountains of gourmet food for his bro to boot) to defuse the boom and become the city
hero. This means he can throw a few extra punches at the office, without question from any powers that be higher up (especially after he assault's the chief and makes it look
like he's died from a heart attack). |
|
^^ OH MY GOD! THE SURGERY WENT ALL WRONG! AIIEEEEEEE!
It's okay doc, he always looks like that. *Bah-doom-tis!* |
Sean learns of the things Castor is doing with his life and becomes more determined to escape prison and fix this whole mess. We are then witness to a contrived prison escape
scene full of people flying in the air weilding dual guns, people sliding on the ground firing guns and some guys falling from high places dubbed with the scream they use on
the Nutri-Grain ads (which is a sound bite used throughout this movie during gun fights). Castor makes his way outside of the prison and realises he is actually on an oil rig
based prison. Ouch. *cue Nutri-Grain scream* Nah, hehe, they actually got Nicolas Cage to do overtime and do a REAL "NOOOOOO!" scream. Well done, Woo. Anyway, fuck, what's he
going to do now? This prison is based on an oil rig out in the middle of fucking nowhere in the ocean!?
Cut to Sean crawling out of water on the beach. Yep, that's right, I guess he just swam to the exact beach of the city he lives in. Sean is smarter than the shark in Jaws IV
who manages to track *BLAH* on her flight to the Bahamas. How do Sean and the shark tread the waters of the great ocean without nagivational equipment? Oh well! *stuffs face
with popcorn*
Castor fucks Sean's wife, acts cool to his daughter and does lots of more likable things to people in Sean's life than Sean ever did. Eventually Sean makes his way back home, tell his wife everything
(and after much proof she finally believes him) and Castor (wearing Sean's face) is exposed as a fraud, leading to a final battle full of people flying around in the air
weilding dual guns, people sliding on the ground firing guns all around them, people dying (including Pollux, Castor's bro) and Nutri-Grain screams. Amongst all this chaos we
come to learn Castor has a sweet little angel son to his whorish girlfriend. She too is killed in one of the "climactic" gun play scenes.
Sean chases Castor down after a massive boat chase scene that's come straight from my ass and finally Castor has been caught. Castor starts to slice at his own face (which,
remember, is SEAN'S face! Booooo! Bad form!) with a broken piece of glass and this displeases Sean so he shoots him with a spear gun while screaming with a ridiculous Travolta voice (oh yeah
his vocal pattern device lodged in his throat is broken after all the insanity of the boat chase so now Sean still LOOKS like Cage but sounds like Travolta) "DIEEEE!".
Now... his arch nemesis, CASTOR TROY, is DEAD. Dah! dah!
Oh and guess what? This just in, another mysterious cloud of bullshit invades the world of Face/Off. Apparently, everything is going to be okay - (to quote Sean's wife)
"they're bringing in their top surgical team from DC. You're going to be okay. When you wake up, everything will be restored... just the way it was." At which point Sean screams
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" because he knows his original face is a hideous face too. That is pure insanity, accept the horse like features of your enemy's face and move on with life, or revert
back to the wide, pudgey Travolta face you always hated deep down inside and live in even more bottled up anguish.
Cut to some time later (in the world of Face/Off this is probably an hour in time) and Sean is back to his stupid Travolta looking self. His daughter and wife greet him at the
door and it's all smiles, sunshine and hugs. He has something to tell them and Castor's son walks into the door way. Sean introduces him as Adam and says he needs a place to live. Sean's
daughter does this stupid hand swiping over the face thing they do to say they love each other and that's the end of the movie. Everyone is happy and alive and smiling. Sean
has a replacement son who is the flesh and blood of his arch nemesis he SWAPPED FACES with and all is good. Hey Sean, maybe you should've had your wife do a pregnancy test first
incase Castor Troy got her knocked up while he FUCKED every night while he WORE YOUR FACE!? Does anybody see what I'm getting at here!? WHERE'S THE FUCKING TRAUMA!? WHERE'S THE
WEIRD FEELINGS YOU CAN NEVER COMMUNICATE!? You know, "Was Castor better than me in bed? Do you wish I was more like him?". How about just the psychological repair that would be
needed after swapping face and body with somebody else? No? Oh, don't ask so many questions? Okay! *stuffs face with popcorn*
|
| Cut to some time later (in the world of Face/Off this is probably an hour in time) and Sean is back to his stupid Travolta looking self. His daughter and wife greet him at the
door and it's all smiles, sunshine and hugs. He has something to tell them and Castor's son walks into the door way. Sean introduces him as Adam and says he needs a place to live. Sean's
daughter does this stupid hand swiping over the face thing they do to say they love each other and that's the end of the movie. Everyone is happy and alive and smiling. Sean
has a replacement son who is the flesh and blood of his arch nemesis he SWAPPED FACES with and all is good. Hey Sean, maybe you should've had your wife do a pregnancy test first
incase Castor Troy got her knocked up while he FUCKED every night while he WORE YOUR FACE!? Does anybody see what I'm getting at here!? WHERE'S THE FUCKING TRAUMA!? WHERE'S THE
WEIRD FEELINGS YOU CAN NEVER COMMUNICATE!? You know, "Was Castor better than me in bed? Do you wish I was more like him?". How about just the psychological repair that would be
needed after swapping face and body with somebody else? No? Oh, don't ask so many questions? Okay! *stuffs face with popcorn*
|
|
^^ Oh look, he's firing dual guns while flying
through the air! *slaps jaw in shock* |
No fuck it, I like to ask questions. Even IF we ignore all that madness, how the fuck are we going to explain Adam's sudden appearance? Surely the Archer's are not a family of liers
and are not just going to make some shit up?
PERSON 1: "Oh, he's a lovely boy isn't he! So how did you come to acquire guardian status over Adam?"
Eve Archer: "Well his parents were killed in a case Sean was working on."
PERSON 1: : "But isn't it illegal to just take a child who has been orphaned from a case you're working on like in that Dexter show and to just "have" them? It's almost kidnapping right? Wouldn't you have to put him in a foster home
first and apply for legal guardianship in the same way that Mike and I had to for little Billy when we found out we couldn't conceive? Why should you be able to do it this way? We had to
sit for years on a waiting list!"
Eve Archer: "Well Martha, I'm sorry if I've offended you."
Martha: "Oh, it's okay, Eve. I'm just on my period. Maybe you could just explain it better. I'm a bit confused by your story and it's making me emotional."
Eve Archer: "Well Sean had to go on this deep undercover mission where he had to wear Adam's father's face. His father was Castor Troy, you know, that super villain who nearly destroyed this whole city?
Anyway, while Sean was wearing Castor's face he discovered Adam was Castor's son. Then when Adam's mother, Castor's whorish drug fiend girlfriend, was killed during a fire fight that the petty squabble between
Castor and Sean caused, Adam was left parentless. So after Sean killed Adam's dad, Castor, with a spear gun, he just decided to take Adam home with him. Then it would replace all the pain he has struggled
to deal with since our son died years ago."
Martha: "But there's so much wrong with that!? It still doesn't explain why you can just "take him home with you". Not to mention healing the pain of a lost loved one by replacing them with someone else.
Isn't that like putting a band aid on a wound that needs stitches? Also, wont Adam feel anger towards Sean for killing his dad?"
Eve Archer: "Martha, we're the Archers! We can do whatever we want. Plus, Sean had to kill Adam's father! He was wearing Sean's face at the time and was cutting it up with a piece of glass that came from the boats they had just crashed while chasing each other!".
Martha: *blows her own head off*
But to give this movie some credit, the gun fights are staged with complete enthusiasm. Unfortunately they're really stupid, contain Nutri-Grain scream dubbing and are also full
of Cage and Travolta. Although Nicolas Cage does have alot of fun in this movie and his performance brings what little entertainment this TWO AND A HALF HOUR ACTION MOVIE has to offer.
John Woo deserves a pat on the back though. I don't know where he found a cinematographer that was able to find a camera/lense combination ample in size to fit both Nicolas Cage
and John Travolta's heads in the same scene. Very well done. Nicolas Cage alone is a challenge. Sure, his face may have cut it back in the 1970s when he played Butch Cassidy's
horse's stunt double, but his face is just far too long for modern cinema. In fact, Nicolas Cage's nostrils take up so much room alone, that whenever he snorts cocaine, the table
upon which the narcotic is strewn must be bolted to the ground in fear of the whole table being sucked up into his nasal cavity. So imagine having these two bumbling fools on your set,
with their large heads. Once with a neurotic hand flapping tendency who can snort tables into his nostrils and the other with his inability to control eating everything in sight.
Well, that's quite a feat to have come out with ANY movie.
Rumour has it they're making a Face/Off 2. Please follow THIS link to see the poster.
While flying through the air weilding dual guns, sliding along the ground firing dual guns
and screaming the Nutri-Grain scream, I give this movie:
|
2 OUT OF 5 JAGER-BABIES. |
|
|
