Leave your brain at the door

Rating: 2/10 (11 June 2006)

I'm clicking the spoiler button, but I can't actually conceive of how you could possibly spoil one of the worst, most utterly stupid plots it has ever been my misfortune to see. I watched it a few weeks ago and didn't bother to review it here, but I now feel I have to redress the balance a bit since so many people seem to think it's great.
What's so stupid? Well, the whole thing ... even assuming you could transplant faces, how can anyone possibly believe that someone with a completely different physique and mannerisms could fool even work colleagues, let alone a wife or a brother? How can we believe that Travolta would go into such a thing with only a couple of people knowing what he's done? Why did they leave Cage alive, and how on earth did he magically go from brain-dead to fully conscious at exactly the critical moment? How could Travolta-as-Cage almost effortlessly manage to break out of a maximum-security prison without even any advance planning? I could go on but I don't think I'll bother - I don't think the writers did.
The near-constant violence is also pretty unpleasant if you bother to think about it. It's common in this kind of action film for bystanders to die in great numbers without anyone apparently caring much, but this goes further than most because Travolta, supposedly on the side of law and order, manages to be responsible for the deaths of quite a few people on his own side, as well as the bad guys (it was slightly unclear in all the shooting whether he actually killed any himself or not). That also contrasts with a sickly sentimentalism about characters who are significant to the protagonists, notably their sons. I'm not generally that bothered by violence in films, but I can't help wondering if this kind of extreme-yet-sanitised violence does have some effect.
I find it hard to comment on the acting. I'm inclined to say that Travolta and Cage make a fair attempt under the circumstances, but that could also be read as saying that they are a bit better than a very bad plot!
About the only positive thing I can say is that the film has a lot of glossy, spectacular action sequences. If you really turn your brain off you can probably appreciate it just as an abstract exercise in film-making. Or on the other hand you could watch something else.