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I am not really a big comment leaver but this doesn't mean I don't enjoy your reviews! :) xx
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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 bomb in a very prominent part of the city but 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 on to himself, he goes on a rampage to get his face back and get even with Archer!
I cannot think of two other actors who could have pulled this off as well as Cage and Travolta did. It takes a brilliant actor
to play a role and then have to pretend to be the same person but with a different mind set on the whole role. Both of these remarkable actors managed to act these roles with style and ease, leaving the viewer not confused but amazed at the plot. Cleverly set in the present time and not in the future, as you would expect, Woo, the director, manages to make the improbability of the face transplant not really matter and at no point did I feel I had lost the concept of the story. It had me engrossed. It is incredible to me that before John Woo came to direct this; Schwarzenegger and Stallone were in mind to play the lead roles. What were they thinking?
Caster Troy's brother was another great character. Played by Alessandro Nivola, he is a very weedy and nerdy man, but has a wicked and evil streak in him that doesn't really come to fruition until later in the film. At the beginning he is childlike and vulnerable and Castor takes on the responsibility of ensuring his little brother is cared for and presentable. It is clear however that Pollux Troy has every immorality going and is a force to be reckoned with in the brains department.
One of the scenes I found particularly emotive was during a major shoot out at the Troy household, with Archer as Troy, he tries to protect Troy's young son from the hideous bloodbath going on around him, and puts his headphones over the young boy's ears. He leads him through the violence and mayhem, whilst the viewer hears what he is listening to through his headset. A beautiful version of "Somewhere over the Rainbow". This was a very clever scene in as far as film makers don't often like you to think they are hurting kids or animals, either physically or mentally and through this scene you can almost imagine the little boy is not taking in any of the blood and bodies around him, simply because he is in his own lullaby world, where such things don't happen. In reality, this is obviously ridiculous but again this film pulls off the unbelievable.
John Woo is a name to be reckoned with in the American film industry now, after breaking out of Hong Kong action films in 1993 and directing Hard Target with Van Damme. He went on to direct other first-rate films like Mission Impossible 2, Hostage and of course Face Off. He has a preference for hard hitting, hard action films with lots of swearing and the 18 certificate on this film is certainly necessary for the swearing alone, although there is the odd grisly scene over the face transplant itself.
The scenes where Castor Troy, in Archer's face, goes home to Archer's family and pretends everything is OK are actually horrible. He has sex with Archers wife and watches Archers daughter talking on the phone in her underwear. It really makes your skin crawl as you know what sort of guy Troy is from an earlier scene, where he asked a woman on the plane "do you want to suck my tongue?" - gross. Eve Archer played by Joan Allen is great too and she plays the part extremely well, as the wife who realises too late that her husband is actually an intruder. Her revulsion as she thinks about what they did is brilliantly portrayed and it is this feeling that spurs her on through her fear and confusion to find out the truth.
Overall, this is certainly one of my favourites that I can sit and watch more than once with no hesitation. The acting and direction are fantastic and although there were plenty of unbelievable plot lines they were entirely acceptable for this story. At just under two and a half hours the film is a perfect length to reel you in enough to be engrossed until the end and the action scenes are numerous and cleverly choreographed to maximise the viewing pleasure, in particular the speedboat scenes, which were originally intended for Hard Target (Woo's first American film as mentioned earlier) that really excelled as far as action scenes go.
If you liked Con Air, Die Hard and even Terminator, you should enjoy this - I certainly did.
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
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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...
Postage & Packaging: £0.00 Availability: 3-5 working days
Oscar. winning superstar Nicolas Cage (Con Air) and screen icon John Travolta (Pulp ... more
Fiction) battle head to head in FACE/OFF...the ultimate cat and mouse thriller directed by the world's most acclaimed action film director, John Woo! To avenge the sens...
Advantages: Fantastic dialogue, action, and well, everything really. Disadvantages: The parallel port Zip drive used in the film has an unbelievably quick seek time.
thedeadparrot 13.06.2001 (14.06.2001)
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful
Review of Face/Off (DVD)
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
Oct 9th, 2006
very helpful by (100%):
