Awesome action film.

Rating: 8/10 (1 February 2007)

Face/Off tells the story of an FBI agent named Sean Archer who is in charge of taking down a dangerous terrorist named Castor Troy. Troy is also responsible for the death of Archer's son 6 years earlier. When Archer puts Troy into a coma, he discovers that there is a bomb ticking somewhere, and only Troy's brother knows where it is. Archer decides to undergo a new surgery that transforms him into Castor Troy by taking Troy's face and putting it on his head so he can find out the location of the bomb. Unfortunately, Castor wakes from his coma and forces the doctors to turn him into Sean Archer. Now Castor Troy is living with Archer's family while Archer sits in jail. He must now figure out a way to escape and convince everybody that his is who he says he is, as well as take Castor Troy down once and for all. This is an amazing action movie that's loads of fun to watch.
First off, the plot of this movie is pretty cool. Originally it was meant to be set in the future, but I think the story would have been way to generic if it was. Thankfully they set it in the present day, and I think it really does the movie justice. Apart from having a really cool original story, the movie features some really awesome action sequences that for the most part are pretty believable, and for me, believable action sequences make an action movie so much better. I think there was a really good balance between actual story and the action, which is good.
The acting is very good in this film. This is a perfect film to show acting range. When it starts out John Travolta is the good cop and Nicholas Cage is the sadistic maniac, and then they suddenly switch roles, and it goes off perfectly. John Travolta plays Nicholas Cage playing a psycho really well, and Nicholas Cage does a good job of playing John Travolta playing a good cop. Truthfully, I liked Nicholas Cage better in the role of Sean Archer than John Travolta, and I'm happy that was the way it was through the majority of the movie rather than vice versa.
Overall, this is a great piece of work from John Woo, a really fun and entertaining action film, actually a good film all around.
8/10