Face/Off Review

Face/Off

Director: John Woo.

Starring: Nicholas Cage, John Travolta, Joan Allen, Alessandro Nivola, Gina Gershon, Dominique Swain.

This is a great movie. I loved it! Will you love it? That depends on a few things. This is not, by any means, a perfect movie. Let me start by getting my complaints out of the way.

Minor Whinge 1: A hair cut during the operation? I know he had to have laser treatment to alter his hairline but a haircut? When I get a haircut, it's days before I stop finding little hairs everywhere. Imagine if one got stuck underneath your face!

Minor Whinge 2: Smoking in a (1) (presumably) sterile, medical area which is also (2) a government building and (3) near a person on a respirator?

Minor Whinge 3: The length of the final showdown. We all know by now that in these action movies, the hero and the villain have to have the final showdown. As each new movie comes out, the finales become more and more outrageous. I first noticed it in The Fugitive (which probably means that it started happening way before then). Our protagonists suffer greater and greater injuries while continuing to fight on. One starts to wonder exactly which fatal blow will actually kill the bad guy.

Minor Whinge 3a: Barefoot water-skiing at incredible speeds, holding on to an anchor chain with a bullet in the shoulder? I don't think so.

Minor Whinge 4: Just too violent. I know it's a violent movie but my complaint is really with the level of gore that we get to see: bullets entering people, ears being blown off, people's heads without their faces. Yuk!

So now you're wondering what I liked about this movie. The above are only minor whinges. There are two major things that set this movie apart from other action movies: Mr. John Woo and the quality of the acting.

Not only does Mr. Woo direct a great movie with superb pacing (the final confrontation notwithstanding) and great images, he creates wonderful characters. Most importantly (to me), he creates fantastic female characters. In Broken Arrow, Terry Carmichael (Ms. Samantha Mathis) gets to save the hero's life not once but twice: she is a woman who can look after herself.

In Face/Off, all the women come out creditably. Ms. Joan Allen as Dr. Eve Archer is strong, clever and someone with a profession. She holds her own when the going gets tough. Sasha Hassler (Ms. Gina Gershon) is even better, able to defend herself in some pretty tricky situations. Even the teenage daughter (Ms. Dominique Swain) learns quickly when given a brief lesson in self-defense.

The other thing that sets this movie apart is the quality of the acting. Although I don't think that there are many people up to the acting standards of Mr. Nicholas Cage, everyone in this movie was superb. While the premise sounds hokey, the execution is so good that I was willing to believe it. If you can stomach a lot of gore, this movie is definitely worth seeing.

In keeping with the tone of this review, I'll finish with my final minor whinge. If I'm Mr. John Travolta and I've just had an operation that makes me better looking, gives me a better body and, as a pleasant side effect, makes me a better actor, why would I want to change back?

Rating: D