Face/Off

Action, Adventure, Drama, Thriller

John Travolta	Sean Archer/Castor Troy
Nicolas Cage	Castor Troy/Sean Archer
Chris Bauer	Ivan Dubov
Tommy Flanagan	Leo
Tom Jane	Burke Hicks
Matt Ross	Loomis
Joan Allen	Dr. Eve Archer
Christopher Bauer	Ivan Dubov
Nick Cassavetes	Dietrich Hassler
Margaret Cho	Wanda
Alessandro Nivola	Pollux Troy
Gina Gershon	Sasha Hassler
Dominique Swain	Jamie Archer
Harve Presnell	Victor Lazarro
Colm Feore	Dr. Malcolm Walsh
John Carroll Lynch	Walton, Prison Guard

Director	John Woo
Producer	Terence Chang; Christopher Godsick; David Permut; Barrie M. Osborne; Michael Colleary
Writer	Michael Colleary; Mike Webb; Mike Werb
Cinematography	Oliver Wood
Musician	John Powell
User Credit 1	Steven Kemper; Christian Wagner
User Credit 2	Ellen Mirojnick

Face Off has a very original plot. Nicholas Cage and John Travolta star on opposing sides of the law. Nicholas Cage is an evil villain capable of unspeakable violence. John Travolta is a good cop who who asked to undergo a radical medical procedure to replace his face with the face of the Nicholas Cage character. The goal is to infiltrate the criminal organization of Nicholas Cage and Locate a bomb that has been placed in the Los Angelas area. The only problem is the two meet up and take over each others lives as their friends, family, and coworkers are unable to tell the two apart. Movie has exciting scenes of action and violence.

At his best, director John Woo turns action movies into ballets of blood and bullets grounded in character drama. Face/Off marks Woo's first American film to reach the pitched level of his best Hong Kong work (Hard-Boiled). He takes a patently absurd premise--hero and villain exchange identities by literally swapping faces in science-fiction plastic surgery--and creates a double-barreled revenge film driven by the split psyches of its newly redefined characters. FBI agent Sean Archer (John Travolta) must play the villain to move through the underworld while psychotic terrorist Castor Troy (Nicolas Cage) becomes a perversely paternal family man while using every tool at his disposal to destroy his nemesis. Travolta vamps Cage's tics and flamboyant excess with the grace of a dancer after his transformation from cop to criminal, while Cage plays the sullen, bottled-up agent excruciatingly trapped behind the face of the man who killed his son. His attempts to live up to the terrorist's reputation become cathartic explosions of violence that both thrill and terrify him. This is merely icing on the cake for action fans, the dramatic backbone for some of the most visceral action thrills ever. Woo fills the screen with one show-stopping set piece after another, bringing a poetic grace to the action freakout with sweeping camerawork and sophisticated editing. This marriage of melodrama and mayhem ups the ante from cops-and-robbers clichés to a conflict of near-mythic levels. --Sean Axmaker