D: John Woo
S: John Travolta, Nicholas Cage, Joan Allen
Watching Face/Off is like discovering John Woo all over again. The
intoxication of the blend of sincere, straight-faced moral dramatics and
ultra-violent, completely over the top action is something rarely felt.
Sensing on one hand that you are meant to take things very seriously, and
on the other being so swept away by the sheer pleasure of well executed
mayhem revitalises one's belief in the power of the cinema. It deals quite
clearly, simply and effectively with themes and ideas in a way which brings
them home even to the most jaded film viewers. It is a well made film: stylish,
entertaining, involving and enjoyable, and it has something worthwhile to
say about society, about people, and about the cinema itself. It sounds
almost too much to say, but John Woo is one of the purest cineastes active
today and Face/Off is one of the best action films to come out of
Hollywood in the past decade.
Having been blown away by his Hong Kong films, including The Killer,
Bullet in the Head and Hard Boiled (among others), many people
were disappointed when his move to America produced Hard Target and
Broken Arrow. Though Hard Target represented an interesting
fusion of styles (and gave Jean-Claude Van Damme his classiest vehicle to
date), Broken Arrow was a disappointingly ordinary Hollywood action
film, almost like someone imitating Woo rather than Woo himself in action.
Thankfully, gloriously, Face/Off is a remarkably 'pure' Woo film,
sure to delight both fans and initiates as thoroughly as ten years before.
The plot details how hard-working cop John Travolta swaps identities with
cool psychopath Nicholas Cage in order to expose a bomb plot by infiltrating
Cage's organisation. He undergoes radical (really, really radical) surgery
to become the other man and begins his dangerous and secret assignment.
But when Cage unexpectedly escapes and pulls the same trick, eliminating
all evidence of the truth, the plot thickens nicely.
As actors, Travolta and Cage surely simply couldn't resist the opportunity
to play these roles. It allows both men to play hero and villain in the
same movie, and lets them play at playing each other whilst playing themselves;
a wonderfully complex nexus of characterisation which would have Lee Strasberg
scratching his head. Cage has made a strange career move since Leaving
Las Vegas into the action genre, and it has not served him well. Neither
The Rock nor Con Air were terribly
good films, let alone ones which provided him with an opportunity to stretch
himself as a performer. In the initial stages of this movie he has a field
day with his leering, smooth killer, and Woo's camera grants him an irresistible
screen presence. But he gets the rather thankless task of down-playing when
he assumes the Travolta persona, and though he does a good job of capturing
the character's crises and nuances, he pales beside Travolta doing his
rendition of the same psycho. The latter has a field day, again relishing
the opportunity to be evil (he gave Broken Arrow what few thrills
it had as its baddie), and with Woo's singular visual style to compensate
for some obviousness in facial gestures with slow-motion and rapid cross-cutting,
it becomes a ham actor's dream; playing a complex part without hard work.
Instead Travolta simply has a good time and knows that he looks great doing
it.
The film runs the emotional gamut, and explores the usual Woo themes of
loyalty, honour, friendship, betrayal, trust, family, religion, and almost
anything else you care to name. But he invokes the dramatic conventions
of all action films with the deep concern of a moral film maker eager to
explore the underlying metaphysics of violence in as visceral a manner as
possible. He is like Sam Peckinpah, only less clinical in execution. Instead
of distancing you from the action for societal comment, Woo draws you into
the understandable basic emotions of quite simple characters, then runs
you ragged as their lives take sudden and violent turns. Though it is tremendously
violent, the film is far from immoral. It neither advocates nor condemns
violence per se, but uses it as the medium through which his cineaste's
eye can be turned on the crises facing human beings in ostensibly ordered
societies. His focus on law enforcement automatically draws in questions
of social attitudes to power and authority, and in detailing a plot by the
Cage character to eliminate his competition whilst in the role of the police
officer, Woo adds valid commentary on the role of the law in sustaining
the status quo. Similarly in having the Travolta character encounter
loyalty and friendship in the world of his rival, a neat counterpoint between
the dysfunctional bourgeois nuclear family of the cop and the weirdly loving
extended family of the psycho provides ample opportunity for questions to
be asked which have no actual resolution in society on the whole.
Even the premise is exceedingly obvious in its concern with meaning. The
exchange of identities produces some of the usual effects, but unlike many
films on the subject, the characters never truly evade the mantle of their
own psychology. Instead, their contrasting lives produce interesting effects
upon one another, without either cop becoming psycho or psycho becoming
cop (replaying some of the dynamics of The Killer). The film's metaphysical
premise is best exemplified by a climactic confrontation between the two
men on opposite sides of a double-sided mirror, where each looks at a reflection
of himself as the other man behind which stands the man himself. Every act
of violence inflicted upon their rival is inflicted upon themselves, and
as the world tears itself to pieces in a hail of gunfire and a river of
blood, Woo never lets go of his fundamental concerns with this kind of moral
drama. It is therefore no surprise that the ending transpires in the manner
it does, and though it again seems like convention, it works entirely within
the framework Woo has established.
Though to me, it seems impossible to avoid these concerns and issues as
raised by the filmmaker, there may be people for whom Face/Off is
merely another action film. In generic terms, action fans will find themselves
slap happy with adrenaline rushes every time Woo turns the screws. It is
marvelously put together, and even manages to pull off the difficult trick
of making a boat chase exciting (remember the climax of Patriot Games
?). The technical prowess with which the film has been assembled is
then matched by its unique style, making excellent use of slow motion (from
which Kathryn Bigelow could learn a few things) on one hand, and extremely
fast, repetitious editing on the other to highlight the important details
in each scene. Unlike many action films today, you don't find yourself confused
when the action gets thick and fast, because Woo is fully aware of where
we need to be and what we need to see, knowing where the important drama
is being played out. And even when the backdrops are distracting (a prison,
a church, a luxurious penthouse), we find ourselves thinking less about
set designs and budgets as about whether or not the characters are in danger
of death, a remarkable fact in and of itself.
At the end of the day, Face/Off is the best fun you're likely to
have in the cinema this year, provided your stomach is up to the task. But
thankfully even the Irish film censor has been able to see that the violence
in this film is not exploitative, and that underlying all of this smoke
and mirrors, histrionics and plot twists, is a strong, coherent statement
on the nature of humanity and our concept of ourselves. It asks us to believe
in what is good rather than revel in what is corrupt, but never to forget
that the inner darkness which leads to violence is integral to our souls,
and must be faced and dealt with rather than repressed in the hope that
it will just go away. In this, Face/Off is as serious a work of cinema
as any, and proves that in the hands of someone who believes in what they
are doing, even the ridiculous can become sublime.
Review by Harvey O'Brien copyright
1997.