Movie Review Monday: Face/Off
May 18, 2015 by Dustin Ramsdell in Movie Reviews
Welcome to another awesome edition of Movie Review Monday!
This week's film is the 1997 action movie Face/Off, featuring John Travolta and Nicolas Cage.
I've seen this movie a few times, and watched it again most recently with my brother. We wanted something simple and fun, and this delivered. The entire film is pretty ridiculous, over the top, and implausible, but it's fun and doesn't try to push an agenda or message. It takes most of it's queues from classic action movie cliches and the unique style of director John Woo.
The basic premise is that Travolta plays a cop, Sean Archer, chasing down Cage's rogue criminal, Castor Troy. Troy killed Archer's son and has been wreaking havoc for years before Archer finally apprehends Troy. Once captured, Troy's last scheme of deploying a bioweapon on Los Angeles comes to light, and Archer has to go undercover to stop it. The catch is that Archer has to take the face of Troy in order to go undercover at a secret maximum security prison to find out where the dirty bomb is. They end up swapping faces (Troy awakens from a coma and forcefully takes Archer's face) and a game of cat and mouse is on.
The premise is obviously pretty wild. The entire movie is essentially just wacky antics from Cage especially but also Travolta pretending to be Troy pretending to be Archer. It's just bad enough to be entertaining however, and while the movie is confusingly long in my opinion (over two hours), it is an enjoyably bad movie.
If you're a fan of classic '80s action movies and/or Nicolas Cage, this is definitely worth checking out. It is especially enjoyable if you listen to How Did This Get Made? do their review of the movie. They notice some laughable moments from the movie that I didn't catch the previous times I watched it but after listening to it, I really noticed them this most recent viewing.
Check out Face/Off, streaming right now on Netflix.
Action, Faceoff, Film, John Travolta, John Woo, Movies, Netflix, Nicolas Cage, Review