{"id":25008,"date":"2017-04-15T08:04:06","date_gmt":"2017-04-15T12:04:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=25008"},"modified":"2017-04-15T04:04:03","modified_gmt":"2017-04-15T08:04:03","slug":"faceoff-1997","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2017\/04\/15\/faceoff-1997\/","title":{"rendered":"Face\/Off (1997)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>America never did John Woo any favors, did it? The man who gave us \u201cThe Killer\u201d and \u201cHard Boiled\u201d now offers us a movie where American stars John Travolta and Nicolas Cage seem to be competing to see who is a worse actor. I guess when you\u2019re working alongside Cage, though, you either have to be as awful as he is, or else risk causing some kind of black hole. Either way, for a man who has such a skill for delivering breakneck action films, \u201cFace\/Off\u201d is that movie so moronic, you can\u2019t even excuse it as science fiction. It\u2019s kind of that movie you just accepted in 1997 mainly because Cage and Travolta joining forces was a little better than when Travolta met Christian Slater in \u201cBroken Arrow.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Travolta plays Sean Archer, an FBI Agent who is consumed with bringing down terrorists Castor Troy after Troy\u2019s botched assassination attempt ends in the murder of Sean\u2019s only son. Troy is a psychopath with a habit for charismatic murders, and molesting underage girls. After finally chasing him down and subduing him, Sean is approached by doctors to consider a new radical means of going undercover. It seems Troy\u2019s brother has planted a bomb in Los Angeles, and the only way Archer can learn about its location is by taking off the face of Troy and switching identities. Because, of course! Going so deep undercover that only a select few people know he\u2019s switched identities, Archer has to prove he is Castor Troy to his fellow criminals.<\/p>\n

But things don\u2019t go as planned since the real Troy awakens, and goes all Joker, murdering people left and right and taking Archer\u2019s face. He then intends on destroying his home life, which is already rocky, thanks to Archer\u2019s obsession to end Troy\u2019s reign of terror. A premise such as this requires a ton of absurdity and it\u2019s not even tongue in cheek absurdity. Woo emphasizes a ton of lunacy behind this concept and Travolta and Cage follow suit with Cage hitting his all time high of awfulness, while Travolta manages to give a pretty good impression of Cage\u2019s speech. The premise is very on the nose to the point where \u201cFace\/Off\u201d sinks in to schlock territory. Archer and his family have a ritual where they caress each other\u2019s faces, and there\u2019s even a moment where both characters face each other representing their mirror images.<\/p>\n

\u201cFace\/Off\u201d can never really convince audiences that it\u2019s anything but a silly bit of action fantasy, especially when it attempts to inject some heart, with undercover Archer learning about Troy\u2019s long suffering wife and illegitimate son. Troy as Archer also manages to take advantage of his long suffering wife, and daughter. \u201cFace\/Off\u201d has all the touchstones of the John Woo movie but none of the flair or excitement. It\u2019s genuine schlock. And not the fun schlock with gratuitous nudity, either.<\/p>\n