Not one of Woo's better efforts

Rating: Null/10 (5 July 1999)

I rate John Woo as one of the best action director's in the world, having seen many of his Hong Kong movies (Killer, Hard Boiled, Better Tomorrow etc). This is Woo's third major hollywood attempt at bringing the 'Woo' characteristics to the fore. And that's the problem - John Woo has made a lot of films and I'm afraid he has ran out of ideas, and those ideas in Face/Off have been done before, only much better.
His first american movie (Hard Target) was very subdued and the choice of Van Damme made the film just another run-of-the-mill action movie.
Broken Arrow was only slightly better, this time he managed to get a couple of decent actors, but you still feel that Woo doesn't have full directorial control in this movie and it just kind of stumbles towards its predictable conclusion.
With Face/Off, you have to be able to suspend your disbelief, but I'm sorry - face and body swapping - er, very hard to believe. Another problem I found was that the movie was too long (about 30 minutes) and Nic Cage really looked embarrassed in some of his scenes.
I'm still waiting for a John Woo movie that can approach the quality I know he is capable of. I wonder if his next movie (Mission Impossible 2) will manage this.
Face/Off = 5/10.