Not the best action movie ever, but it's definitely up there.

Rating: 8/10 (1 October 2005)

This movie has a really good sense of style at the beginning, and the acting is very well done by both Travolta and Cage-when they're playing their own characters (i.e. Cage is playing Castor and Travolta's playing Sean Archer). It may seem a bit clichéd at first, or at least it did to me. You know, an obsessive cop trying to avenge his dead son, finally tracking down the man who did it? The beginning may seem like the end of another mediocre action movie, and then-Castor is caught, telling Archer that L.A. will be destroyed by a bomb that he set.
And then everything gets interesting.
To find out where the bomb is, Archer goes into an extensive surgery to make himself look and sound just like Castor Troy. This is very interesting, because now Nicholas Cage acts like John Travolta trying to act like Nicholas Cage. It's all very cool. Castor comes back, and decides to-what else? Get revenge on Archer by becoming Archer. Once again, Travolta acts like Nicholas Cage trying to impersonate John Travolta. A prison break and a high-rise shootout later, Archer gets to his wife, who believes his story. Then, well, everything starts to lose steam. The story is no longer about the characters in the third act, it's about gunfights and explosions. This part is still good, however, because of John Woo's expert directing and the impressive pyrotechnics (all right, so I'm congratulating slow-mo explosions. Sue me.).
In the first and third act, this is an above-average action movie, but the middle of the movie is so good that it makes the whole thing great. Nicholas Cage, Joan Allen, and John Travolta's performances don't hurt, either. Overall, this is not the best action movie ever made, but it's definitely worth picking up.
8 out of 10.