Face/Off (1997)

In one of the more psychological action films to star the ambivalent Nicolas Cage, the tangled pasts and frightening motives of a serial killer, psychotic, and career criminal, who has assumed the identity of his worst enemy and our hero, comes forth. The reason the tension between the two characters works so well is because they aren't simple characters. Cage's insanity is there just because, he is in fact a disturbed and complex character, confronted by morality on a daily basis and in the most sinister of ways, reveals his own ridiculous actions by cramming evil down his own throat. The science behind the operations and the dastardly plot isn't what makes me uneasy about giving this film a glowing review. I can deal with a high level of suspension of disbelief based on my own love of action films, but it's the way everything is directed, the photography, the presentation of certain scenes, that just irked me. The plot got so tangled up in itself while trying to be climactic, that it became a lack of easy effects and witty dialogue. Woo is an accomplished director, and his way of doing things isn't wrong, but for my tastes I would never create scenes that are so distorted and airy, with that ugly soundtrack, that at times I wasn't certain if they were dream sequences, mock endings, or what the director wants us to perceive. Travolta, who plays over the top with an air of pretension in the Castor role, does come off as human through and through. Sean Archer, though portrayed by two separate actors, is composed and fleshed out. He is not only likable, but truly an original figure in action films. He has problems with his wife, daughter, the death of his son, and his work taking down Castor Troy. The action was inciting, the explosions annoyingly unrealistic, and the relationship betweent the two halves didn't seem completely real because Troy's motivation isn't apparent. I still don't understand why Troy exists as a character, and what his actions mean in the context of his life, his role in this vendetta against Archer. The cast is phenomenal, including a big lipped Gina Gershon and a trembling rebel of a wife played by Joan Allen. It was entertaining without being highly cerebral. I only wish I could have enjoyed it without pretension.