Production Year: 1997 - Thriller - Director: John Woo - Original Language: English - Classification: 18 years and over - Starring: Kirk Baltz, Colm Feore, Paul Hipp, Steve Hytner, Linda Hoffman, Matt Ross, Thomas Jane, Chris Bauer, John Carroll Lynch, Dominique Swain, Tommy Flanagan, Margaret Cho, Robert Wisdom, Myles Jeffrey, Lisa Boyle, Jamie Denton, Danny Masterson, Megan Paul, Ben Reed, Tom Reynolds, Michael Rocha, Lauren Sinclair, Dana Smith, Carmen Thomas, Romy Walthall, Mike Webb, Del Zamora, John Bloom, John Travolta, Nicolas Cage, Joan Allen, Gina Gershon, Alessandro Nivola, Nick Cassavetes, C.C.H. Pounder, Harve Presnell more
The ordeal of super-heroic, singularly dedicated FBI agent Sean Archer (John Travolta – BLOW OUT, SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER) is only beginning after finally capturing his arch nemesis,... more
Face/Off DVD
An international terrorist for hire named Castor Troy is being relentlessly pursued by ... more
Sean Archer an FBI agent whose son Castor accidentally killed in an assassination attempt years earlier. After finally catching Troy Archer's troubles have only ju...
Face/Off [DVD] [1997]
At his best, director John Woo turns action movies into ballets of blood and bullets ... more
grounded in character drama.Face/Offmarks 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-barrelled 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 actionfans, 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
Face/Off [DVD] [1997]
At his best, director John Woo turns action movies into ballets of blood and bullets ... more
grounded in character drama.Face/Offmarks 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-barrelled 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
Face/Off [DVD] [1997]
At his best, director John Woo turns action movies into ballets of blood and bullets ... more
grounded in character drama.Face/Offmarks 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-barrelled 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 actionfans, 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
Production Year: 2002 - Thriller - Director: K.C. Bascombe - Original Language: English - Classification: 15 years and over - Starring: Jesse James, Rachel Skarsten, Charles Powell, Linda Purl, Kevin Zegars
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Thriller - Original Language: English - Classification: 15 years and over - Starring: Timothy West, Neil Morrissey, Tara Fitzgerald, Annette Crosbie, Pauline Quirke, Rob Brydon, Denise Van Outen, John Thomson, Kevin Whately, David Suchet
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Production Year: 2002 - Thriller - Director: Matt Dillon - Original Language: English - Classification: 15 years and over - Starring: Matt Dillon, James Caan, Natascha McElhone, Gerard Depardieu, Sereyvuth Kem, Stellan Skarsgard
A review by pennii on Face/Off (DVD) December 7th, 2001
Author's product rating:
Did you enjoy it?
Loved it
Story
Good
Characters / Performances
Outstanding
Special Effects
Good
How does it compare to similar films?
Outstanding
Advantages:
Everything but . . .
Disadvantages:
. . . The explosions
Recommend to potential buyers:
yes
Full review
We’ve had the Face Off video for about 2 years or so (cheers Haylie) and I managed to watch it for the first time yesterday. Action films bore the life out of me and Face Off looked like it was the usual helicopter chasing, mucho explosions, no plot, shoot ‘em up. I finally succumbed to it all after 3 weeks of Nevil’s none stop Face off hand signals and his constant plot spoiling. It’s clearly worked because he hasn’t suddenly shoved a hand in my face saying ‘Face…off!’ with a fancy flourish for a good 12 hours now.
Face Off is directed by John Woo who, I gather, is an Action Director of the highest order, and Executive Producer is none other than chief lard arse himself: Michael Douglas (if, indeed, he is the man I’m thinking of). John Travolta (Who I went right off after hearing about his Scientology) is Sean Archer, a FBI agent, and Nick Cage (always synonymous with Elvis and snakeskin) plays Castor Troy the terrorist.
Although I like Pulp Fiction, I thought that Travolta’s performance in it was overrated. My vase of Lilies are scarier gangsters. I also thought that he’d probably been overrated in this, but his acting was quite outstanding and he really surprised me. Cage, of course, is just brilliant no matter what he does. Apart from marriage.
The character of Caster is a raging and charismatic madman, and the character of Sean is a sensitive, sometimes moody, all round good guy who throws himself into his work. He’s a family man who loves his wife and daughter whereas Caster is a crazy old slut who lives for the evil pleasures in life. For reasons that will become apparent later, both actors play both these parts. If you think I’m revealing too much of the plot here, I’ll justify myself by saying that I think it’s absolutely necessary to rave about the strength and talent of Travolta and Cage, without whom the film really would be just another crappy shoot ‘em up. But on with the plot…
Caster had murdered Sean’s son 6 years previously and during this time Sean has been on a mission to find the bastard and avenge his son’s death. Very early on in the film, Sean and his FBI crew find Caster and boring action sequence Number One then begins. Guns, fire, chasing, helicopter, high velocity and low appeal. It went on for far too long and I almost fell asleep, especially when Sean and Caster (Both masters in their fields and accurate gunmen, I’ll add) kept shooting at each other and missing, purely to lengthen and add suspense to a tired old scene.
Caster has an equally crazy younger brother who’s a bit more unhinged than he is, but they’re both partners in crime. The brother gets arrested and imprisoned, and Caster was so injured by Sean that he’s now in a coma. The brother confesses that he has built a bomb that Caster has already planted and is due to explode on the 18th of that month, but as this is the only information he’ll give them, the FBI come up with a completely harebrained scheme.
They want Sean to wear Caster’s face and infiltrate the prison and pretend to be him, to get the info they need about the whereabouts of the bomb. But he can’t tell anyone about this, not his fellow workers and especially not his family. Well of course he can’t.
So, a top, mega-skilled surgeon carefully and precisely slices off Sean’s face before slicing off Casters and transplanting it onto Sean. The operation is a success and now Cage is playing Sean. Cage is always an excellent choice for playing madmen, but he can also calm his performance down and play the sensitive guy. Also, as he looks at himself in the mirror for the first time with the face of the man who murdered his son, his reaction is spot-on as he goes berserk with disgust and hatred.
The prison is unbelievably strict, but Sean manages to coax the information out of his brother. Caster wakes up from his coma in the meantime and discovers he hasn’t got a face. This isn’t at all gruesome, as we only get to see his fleshy face side on. He then threatens the surgeon into transplanting Sean’s face onto his, so Travolta is now playing Caster, then he kills everyone connected with the operation so that nobody will ever know that he isn’t who he looks like. If you see what I mean.
Caster now pretends to be Sean, and takes over his job and moves into his house. Sean, who pretends to be mad and breaks out of jail, now has to hang around with Caster’s mates because no one will believe his story and he’s got nowhere else to go. And of course, there’s a love interest involving caster’s ex, but the film proceeds well and I was hooked. The rest of the film deals with evil Castor infiltrating Sean’s life and Sean trying to persuade his wife that he’s Sean, even if he doesn’t look like Sean and although Caster looks like Sean, he’s actually Caster. It’s all so confusing. Actually, it's easier to understand on screen.
The film ends in a Reservoir Dogs style shoot off, but my lips are sealed as to who dies and whether or not the truth outs. And what significance the little boy, eh?? You’ll have to watch it yourselves, people. I did enjoy it despite the action scenes, which I begrudgingly admit are imperative to an action film. The dialogue was good and believable and the acting and direction was superb. I might even watch it for a second time. I never thought I’d hear myself say THAT about fake, boring explosions…
Advantages: Superb Direction, Great acting, compelling viewing. Disadvantages: It took so long to see it originally.
...without a decent cast and Face/Off seems to work there as well. With a cast that includes Nicholas Cage and John Travolta there was little chance this wasn’t going to work. Of course Woo had worked with Travolta before on Broken Arrow and that partnership seems to have been rekindled. I’ve not come to expect any less from Travolta but it is another amazing performance. He really makes the characters his own and when playing both personalities really ... ...The same can be said of Cage. I’ve always thought that he was a good actor but this role shows just how diverse his acting ability actually is. The way both he and Travolta show each of the characters is almost scary as they adopt characteristics from both characters into their roles. Of course you wouldn’t really expect anything less from two of the best actors in Hollywood. The rest of the cast play a good supporting role, with very good performances ...
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Ciao members have rated this review on average very helpful
Nicholas Cage and John Travolta are paired up in this explosive action film, which has to be one of my favourite films of all time.
Castor Troy (Cage) attempts to murder FBI Agent Sean Archer, (Travolta) while he enjoys a carousel ride with his young son. Unfortunately the bullet passes through Archer's shoulder and hits his son, killing him outright. Archer is devastated and revenge is foremost on his mind.
A few years later Troy has planted a ... ...sustains injuries in a fight with Archer, which leaves him comatose. In order to locate the position of the bomb Archer agrees to undergo a futuristic and pioneering operation to swap faces with Troy. Undercover as Troy, Archer can effectively get inside information from his friends about the bomb, while pretending to be Troy. Unfortunately Troy wakes from his coma and realises he has no face. Threatening the doctors into transplanting Archer's face ...
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Ciao members have rated this review on average very helpful
This next review is another action film, one which I would consider to be a great film, not only because of the starts involved in the film, but rather the unique storyline of the film, it was something that had yet to be done, and in my opinion was just done brilliantly. I am reviewing the 1997 blockbuster hit "Face Off", directed by John Woo and starring John Travolta and Nicolas Cage. For me this film was just genius, because it took an unheard ... ...of that I consider these two actors to be brilliant and watching the film, showed how well these two characters seemed to work with one another. It was action, drama and excitement throughout and I don't think I can remember a moment were I was bored.
Director: John Woo has been a huge director for some time now; I must confess I hadn't actually heard of him until he made Broken Arrow in 1996, in which he also worked with Travolta. However since ...
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Ciao members have rated this review on average very helpful
Advantages: Fantastic dialogue, action, and well, everything really. Disadvantages: The parallel port Zip drive used in the film has an unbelievably quick seek time.
Well, as many of you will know, I'm in the middle of writing my Disney series of ops. So what am I doing writing about a film that's about as far from Disney as you can get, I hear you ask. Well, I had thought about writing one about "Beauty and the Beast", then I started one on "Aladdin", but I just wasn't having any fun. So, for a change of pace I decided that I ought to write about an all action movie, full of explosions, two handed gun play and ... ...which directors use to show us that what we're watching is, in fact, a flashback. It's six years ago, and Sean Archer (John Travolta - Grease, Pulp Fiction) is with his son, riding an old fashioned merry-go-round. The camera zooms back, and we see Castor Troy (Nicolas "I want to play a superhero before I die" Cage - Leaving Las Vegas, Raising Arizona) uncovering a rifle. He aims for Sean and then hesitates, not wanting to hit his son. He waits and ...
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Ciao members have rated this review on average very helpful
As the film came to an end, I thought to myself 'Hmm....miracles can happen'. I am referring to the performance of one of the stars of this film, namely, Nicolas Cage. The man is one of Hollywood's big names, yet I have failed to click to any of his acting roles in any of his recent films. Barring 'Raising Arizona' which I hilariously enjoyed, and 'Leaving Las Vegas' which I believe he won an Oscar for, yet I felt was too dark for me at the time ... ...pay to watch him at the cinema, though would happily watch his movies on TV. Yet with this picture, he had a half decent stab at trying to genuinely portray the character in question, or should I say, two characters, despite the perennial 'over the top' flash in infrequent patches, he still managed to bring across the right emotions involved at the right time.
Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against the man. He's probably a nice guy to those ...
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Ciao members have rated this review on average very helpful
...actors and well developed characters
Face/off:
well what can i say... I think this is the one to watch out of them. the story line of this movie isn't the best i've seen in my life but i have to say it had some pretty nice action, there's tons of language in it and lots of explotions!
Great for action lovers
Over all this DVD set is a great buy all three film are on my top 10 list
I must say this is a fantastic pack! Nicholas Cage is a fantastic actor and these are 3 of his best films.
Video Description
Face/Off:
DVD Special Features: Action Overload
Cast Biographies
Theatrical Trailer
Languages: English
Subtitles: English for the hearing impaired
Running Time: 133 minutes approx.
Format: Widescreen 2.35:1
Dual Layer Format
The Rock - 2 Disc Set Disc 1:
The Movie
Audio Commentary
Disc 2
Analysis of the Dive...
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Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful
Advantages: i personaily think that 2 out 0f 3 of these films are brilliant really worth watching Disadvantages: has to be the fact it has the film the rock
...I sat down to watch faceoff with out reading about it,or having even read the back of the dvd case. but it had nicolas cage in so i thought why not and i really really enjoyed the film. i think i have seen it about 12 times now.. it still makes me laugh now. gone in 60 secounds was just a well thought out dvd. it made me laugh. shocked me and made me worried in places i really enjoyed watching it. The rock.. i just really coudn't get in to this film, just my opion i didnt think much of it and decided to turn it off before i really even got in to it, so my comments on it are only based on my taste in films. but this pacage is worth buying just for the other 2 dvd's . you will have a good saturday night in !...
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Ciao members have rated this review on average somewhat helpful
Advantages: Three films with Nicolas Cage in. Disadvantages: Not his best three
...opinion the best. at first he refuses to help and tries to escape, but Dr. Stanley Goodspeed persuades him and the two form a great onscreen relationship.
the team get into Alcatraz but are soon in the line of heavy fire, within minutes its all left to Cage and Connery. the special effects are good but not incredible, in my opinion they didn't need to be its still a great film.
faceoff - a really interesting story. the face transplant is both disgusting yet amazing.
the story follows the classic, cop trying to take down a criminal who's impossible to catch. however the body swap is not the norm and this along with the acting make this a great film. FBI agent Sean Archer played by John Travolta is trying to catch Castor Troy a terrorist played by the brilliant Nicolas Cage. Troy killed Archer's son. Archer finds Troy and a fight...
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Plot: FBI agent Sean Archer (John Travolta) undergoes surgery allowing him to switch faces with the comatose terrorist Castor Troy (Nicolas Cage) in order to enable Sean to avenge the senseless murder of his son. When Castor awakes he assumes Sean's identity plunging Sean into a nightmare situation where he ends up fighting for his life and that of his wife and daughter.
Release details
DVD Region: DVD
Studio(s): WALT DISNEY STUDIOS HOME ENTERTAINM; TECHNICOLOR DISTRIBUTION SERVICES
Release date: 11/06/2001
No of Discs: 1
Catalogue No: BED 888316
Barcode: 5017188883160
Production Designer: Neil Spisak
Screenwriter: Michael Colleary, Mike Werb, Barrie M. Osborne
Executive Producer: Terence Chang, Michael Douglas, Steven Reuther
Editor: Steven Kemper, Christian Wagner
Languages
Main Language: English
Subtitle Language: English
Hearing Impaired Language: English
DVD Description
The ordeal of super-heroic, singularly dedicated FBI agent Sean Archer (John Travolta – BLOW OUT, SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER) is only beginning after finally capturing his arch nemesis, Castor Troy (Nicolas Cage – WILD AT HEART, NATIONAL TREASURE), an elusive, maniacal terrorist who claimed the life of Archer's son. While Troy languishes in a coma, Archer surgically 'borrows' Troy's face in an attempt to gather evidence about Troy's last bomb--which is currently ticking away in a Los Angeles office building. Trouble ensues when Troy wakes up faceless, borrows Archer's visage, and makes a mess of Archer's life; all the while, both men struggle to adapt to their new identities while struggling to blow each other away.
Another balletic, thematically complex action smorgasbord from Hong Kong action director John Woo (HARD BOILED, THE KILLER), FACE/OFF is the perfect showcase for the acting talents of Travolta and Cage, each spending most of the film perfectly imitating the other. The pair are also ably supported by Joan Allen (THE CONTENDER, THE ICE STORM), Allesandro Nivola (I WANT YOU, GOAL!) and Gina Gershon (BOUND, SHOWGIRLS).
Technical information
Special Features: Action Overload, Cast Biographies, Theatrical Trailer
Aspect Ratio: 1.85 Wide Screen
Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1
Dubbing Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1 English
Professional reviews
Review: "...A mega-movie that actually delivers what mega-movies promise: strong characters, smart plotting, breathless action and a gimmick that hasn't been seen before..." (New York Times, p.C1, 27/06/1997)
"...FACE/OFF is relentlessly exciting, thanks to Woo's operatically staged fight and chase scenes and the bravura acting of the two stars..." -- 3 1/2 out of 4 stars (USA Today, p.1D, 27/06/1997)
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