One of the best 90's action movies...

Rating: 8/10 (29 May 2017)

Face Off is one of the popular 90's action flicks of that decade. It is directed by a well-known Hong Kong director and who legitimately majorly influenced action films or sequences nowadays, known for chaotic action sequences, Mexican Standoffs, and frequent usage of slow motion. This film contains all of these aspects, as well as the addition of the two famous actions stars, John Travolta, and Nicolas Cage.
As the film title states, the film starts with a soul of an FBI agent named Sean Archer (John Travolta) and his very young son getting shot and nearly assassinated by one of the mob terrorists named Castor Troy (Nicolas Cage). Sean Archer's son persists dead from the gunfire. After a few years later, Castor and some of his mob crews are captured from the FBI operation group led by Sean Archer. However, in order to foil an extortion plot, Sean, the FBI agent goes into a facial transplant surgery and exchanges with Castor for 7 days. He has assumed an identical identity of the Castor as he looks exactly similar with his plantation and whirls to obtain the location and the codes of a massive bomb that can wipe out several and tons of lives. However, everything goes perversely when the real Castor Troy wakes up from a coma before expected and gets the same facial transplant surgery for Sean's face.
This is such a different and an original concept that has never been taken before. In the film, it illustrates this very brief shortly as it is supposedly more shed into a genre of Sci-Fi. This could be mistaken as for the most preponderance of the film continues for a period of time of events happening between the accidentally switched life of Sean and Castor as they both premiere experience and endure the risks and faith of their new lives. John Travolta first plays an FBI agent who is desperate for revenge and his family's conditions but as the facial transplant surgery befalls to him, we see the face of a terrorist implanted to the main hero and faithful FBI agent who secretly needs to extract information about a bomb terror in a city. John Travolta is wickedly entertaining to watch his presence and his physical and mental change of a person, he acts smoothly and quiet, but later performances wicked, frightening yet hilarious and a person who has a heavy sexual desire. He outtakes the personal yet wonderfully disorganized life of the original Sean and makes the outcome of running it and changing the course to his desire of style. Nicolas Cage first plays the after the character of John Travolta the boss of a terror organization but later transfigures to a vulnerable hero who gets yanked into a thoroughly unexpected harsh situation. Nicolas Cage is the best aspect that could be supplemented to this film, as he is at his prime best, courageous and peddles the likability of his character.
As this is an action flick, it executes the action as expected from a 90's action film. The action here is remarkably entertaining. Additionally, audiences can assert that the stunts are somewhat dangerous and when an action sequence ensues, a stunt double has been replaced with the actors. Like all cheesy 90's action flicks, the action is competitively identical yet entertaining as usual. John Woo's direction makes the normal average 90's action flick, more upscale and procreates some of the revolutionary action sequences and styles that are continued throughout until nowadays. Additionally, he definitely borrows the elements from his previous foreign action films making this action fresh at the time of period. Aside from the entertaining and cool action sequences, this film frequently has a heavy-handed dramatic weight as the two opposite characters change. We have an empathy to Nicolas Cage's character Sean as we want his accomplishment of rejoining with his wife and family to obtain the joy-ness and true laughter.
Overall, Face Off is one of the better 90's action flicks. It consists of cool and utterly entertaining 90's John Woo's action sequences, an original idea, and sometimes a heavy dramatic weight to the vulnerability of the hero. It could be diverted into a dumb-fun 90's action flick or a well-wrought Sci-Fi and action film.
Grade: A