Face/Off (1997)

Face/Off (1997)

10/10

Starring

John Travolta

Nicolas Cage

Directed by John Woo

There is no better action film out there than the one that this duo (Travolta and Cage) dug up in Face/Off, with heavy budget being put down for the intense action scenes depicted in this movie, director John Woo won the Saturn Awards for Best Directing as he leads us down a path where we discover the repercussion of a life without forgiveness.

The movie’s high point is the speedboat chase towards the ending of the film, the scene got a MTV Movie Awards for Best Action Scene and the movie duo won Best Duo (in the MTV Movie Awards) for Travolta and Cage.

The movie tries to show the effects of personal feuds and how if not well contained can ruin lives of those we love and nothing sets off to show us this lesson than this classic that has its tales drawn from Greek mythological feud between Hector and Achilles. The names Castor and Pollux also come from a pair of brothers in Greek mythology. The wonderful face off scene at the end between the two leads that had doves flying around is similar to Woo's classic 1989 Hong Kong film The Killer.

The movie plot is about Sean Archer (John Travolta) an FBI Agent who has been chasing down a criminal crime Lord Castor Troy (Nicolas Cage) for years. Their feud led to the death of Archer’s son Michael, and Archer strongly believes that his son's killer is his sworn enemy Castor Troy.

Archer finally cornered Castor one day and a fight broke out and Troy got knocked out cold. But Archer later finds out that Troy has planted a bomb somewhere in Los Angeles and the only other person who knows the bomb location is Castor's brother Pollux, who refuses to talk.

To get Pollux to talk a special operation doctor provided a solution that will require cutting off the face of Troy and placing it on Archer, Archer undergoes the surgery with the knowledge of limited people, so as to keep the operation hidden and takes the face of Troy to go undercover.

But things go wrong when Castor Troy somehow regains consciousness and now wants revenge on Archer for taking his face, and the first thing Troy does is to kill everybody who knows about the operation.

Face/Off was highly hyped before its release which happened to be the same year that Titanic (1997) was released, Face/Off lived up to the hype, making you the audience wanting to watch the film over and over again because one ride is not enough; It was also a commercial success making thrice its worth in the box office. Face/Off Holds a 94 percent "Fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes, the only thing that separates this movie from old time classics like Mad Max is the intense use of action set pieces.

The acting by this two is one I will not forget soon, when watching the movie on its release I wanted to be an action hero like one of them. Face/Off to me is a classic and one of the best action films I have seen till date.