Face/Off (1997)
director: john woo
cast: john travolta, nicolas cage, joan allen, alessandro nivola, gina gershon, dominique swain, nick cassavetes, harve presnell, colm feore, john carroll lynch, cch pounder, robert wisdom, margaret cho, jamie denton, matt ross
Hammy
John Travolta continues to pick projects that makes you forget how good he was
in “Pulp Fiction”. This time out, Barbarino is a FBI man on the trail of deranged
crook/terrorist Nicholas Cage. When a comatose Cage is captured, Barbarino has
no choice but to have Cage’s face surgically put-on him in order to infiltrate
Cage’s gang and discover the whereabouts of a hidden bomb (whatever). After
Cage snaps out of it and takes Travolta’s face, job and wife (Joan Allen) the
movie should be off and running. Instead John Woo’s fumbling direction ruins
all the potential fun of this psychological pot-boiler. When the guns are put
away, the movie drifts.
One of many subplots
that are squandered is the relationship between tight-
ass
Travolta and his troubled teenage daughter, Dominique Swain. When her dad is
suddenly transformed into a dark and mysterious rebel, she is intrigued. With
the stench of incest wafting in the air, Woo gets cold feet. The rest of the
action between Cage and Travolta is just a predictable showdown highlighted
by another boring cliché: the hero and villain pushing their pistols into each
others face while in a standoff. Woo can be partly forgiven since he is the
originator of this unfortunate version of cock-fighting but it’s time to come
up with something new. Evidently, Face/Off was a futuristic sci-fi but for some
reason was re-set in the present, making it just that much more ridiculous.
— Tom Graney
$1.52
© 1997 Hollywood Outsider™