Butchered Handel and facial tissue

Rating: 3/10 (27 January 2001)

Early on the villain utters the line, "You even make that HACK composer Handel sound good."
Well OF COURSE Handel will seem like a hack, if you judge him by this edited-to-within-an-inch-of-its-life version of the Hallelujah chorus plucked from some thirty-second Mitsubishi ad. What is this - the Good Bits Messiah for Cretins? But then, all of "Face/Off" is similarly mangled and over-edited.
The basic conceit is silly, not that it's the silliness I object to - Sean Archer (played by John Travolta and Nicholas Cage) swaps faces with Castor Troy (played by Nicholas Cage and John Travolta). I mean, literally. Archer and Troy don't just disguise themselves as one another; they literally SWAP FACES. Imagine a film predating heart transplants, in which the hero and villain (again, literally) swap hearts. Is that gross, or what? Well, this is grosser. I wouldn't have minded in the least if the face-swapping had been non-literal, and accomplished by supernatural means, but it isn't: we actually SEE the gruesome medical procedure, and thereafter it's hard to look at either actor's face without shuddering.
Ugh.
I find it hard to believe that Woo believed in what he was doing in this film - while the almost-as-silly "Mission: Impossible 2" had visual poetry, "Face/Off" just has visual gimmickry, and, I swear, twice as many edits. (Should I see Woo's earlier, Hong Kong work? No doubt I should. I'm ashamed to admit I haven't.) -But bear in mind that, although I'm usually a fairly charitable viewer, I sat through most of "Face/Off" in a sour mood. That Handel massacre at the start is enough to put anyone in a sour mood.