Like looking in the mirror...

Rating: 8/10 (24 April 2014)

Well, let's face it, for all its (over)use of cases, shootouts and stunts as spectacular as they're formulaic, "Face/Off" is more than your average show-off action-packed thriller. The film stands off above all its peers thanks to one simple but genius premise, so creative and incongruous, you've got to wonder how come they waited till Cinema was 100 years to think about having the hero and the villain switching their faces, and see where this is getting, not that it would have required many special effects, right?
I can imagine, not without excitement, the brainstorm that lead to the plot genesis: the two guys have to hate each other, the villain isn't just the antagonist, he's the hero's nemesis, so a cop and a criminal isn't enough, how about making it personal like say, the bad guy accidentally kills the hero's son, the hero's got a reason to hate him and apparently the villain seems to hold some serious grieves against him, that's for the reciprocity. What next? Well, how about the big question, why would they switch the faces? Well, because the hero will have to pass as the bad guy to know a secret, what kind of secret, the kind of emergency life-and-death secrets, a code of some sort bingo, a bomb.
Now, we need someone the bad guy trusts blindly, let's give him a brother and while you're at it, give them some kind of legendary pairing names, Achilles and Ajax, Romulus and Remus or Castor and Pollux we progress. So, suppose they take Castor's face and implant it on the hero, let's call him Sean (like John but more original), everyone would know? No, it has to be a secret mission to ensure its success. Wait; will Castor remain face-less? Of course not, this is where it's getting tricky. Suppose he wakes up, he discovers the plan and ask the doctors to implant Sean's face on his before getting rid of them. Wow, talk about the perfect set-up, I can only imagine the first face-to-face between the two guys. Now, we've got our first 'great and memorable moment'.
And the creative implications of the film are countless, the immersion of the criminal within the very family he dispossessed from one son, his luscious looks on 'his' own daughter, or the bad guy having to team up with criminals. But wait, how about the initial motive, the bomb and all that stuff? Well this is the icing on the cake, Castor tells his brother who he is, he discards the bomb and he's the town hero. Now I'm sure it didn't take more than an hour to get the spine of the film and this is not to diminish its merit, but to highlight the positive effects of inventiveness. All it takes is one hell of an idea and the rest is only coverage, the writing, the spectacular effects, all the most significant departments of film-making are involved, on the top of them: acting.
It goes without saying that the film couldn't have existed if Castor was played by Danny De Vito and Sean by Arnold Schwarzenegger, although the premise of a spoof-remake would be hilarious. So they needed two actors of the same size shape and caliber, well, I guess they got it right with John Travolta and Nicholas Cage, two of the most bankable actors of the 90's, fittingly blue-eyed, hairy-chested and equally tall and strong. Well, of course, the suspension of disbelief asks more from us. Many persons would point out the possibility of the cop's wife to notice some differences in some specific parts of their husbands' anatomy. Although, it's not improbable that in the heat of the passion, a woman wouldn't notice, but then how about the hands, feet, well, it asks a lot but let's not to be too technical.
Indeed, one of the film's strengths is not to focus too much on the scientific material, "Face/Off" could easily be labeled as Sci-fi movie, but it focuses more on the change of personalities and the way too men who hate each other, learn to live in another skin. It's an insightful examination of the eternal correlation between what we are and how we look, and that the whole 'don't look at me' can't work in real life. I have one scene in mind right now, when the daughter helps Castor because she simply can't believe he is not her father. But I got so carried away by those details that I forgot I had to talk about the acting, which is the little spice the film provided, for our greatest delight, and for both Travolta and Cage who certainly took it as an extraordinary challenge.
I recently suggested a poll asking which of the two actors gave the better performance as the other's character. Now, I realize it's an unfair question, because the two actors didn't try to impersonate each other, not quite. They played their personal version of good guys and villains, and made them match. Nicholas Cage has a unique way to make his eye bulge and look demonically frightening while Travolta puts it all in that devilish smile and menacing eyes, obviously with Travolta's face, you can't mimic expression made possible with Cage's. But Cage has also an extraordinary capacity to look sad and sensitive, it's all in the eyes again  and Travolta's puts it in the smile, and it works again. I rooted for Cage as a good guy equally as for Travolta and thought they were charismatic as bad guys.
"Face-Off" might be labeled as an action pop-corn movie but its power and awesomeness lies on the fact that it didn't take Woo's directing skills (indeed, it's spectacular from A to Z) for granted but involve everything that makes movies worth to watch, and naturally, it didn't make the unforgivable mistake to deprive us from a mirror-scene.