Average Rating: 7.9/10
Reviews Counted: 63
Fresh: 59 | Rotten: 4
John Travolta and Nicolas Cage play cat-and-mouse (and literally play each other) against a beautifully stylized backdrop of typically elegant, over-the-top John Woo violence.
Average Rating: 8.5/10
Critic Reviews: 16
Fresh: 16 | Rotten: 0
John Travolta and Nicolas Cage play cat-and-mouse (and literally play each other) against a beautifully stylized backdrop of typically elegant, over-the-top John Woo violence.
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Average Rating: 3.5/5
User Ratings: 416,378
The third of John Woo's American-made feature films, Face/Off stars John Travolta as Sean Archer, an FBI agent obsessed with capturing Castor Troy (Nicolas Cage), a criminal genius who years before killed Archer's son while trying to assassinate the agent. Archer's single-minded pursuit of Troy has caused serious harm to his marriage, but Archer thinks the light may have appeared at the end of the tunnel when a seriously wounded Troy is captured in a bloody shootout. However, it turns out that
Jun 27, 1997 Wide
Oct 6, 1998
Paramount Pictures
All Critics (66) | Top Critics (18) | Fresh (64) | Rotten (4) | DVD (27)
John Woo's Face/Off puts the acting into action flick...
Top CriticScenes of high-voltage action vie with wild hilarity as two guys with guns switch faces and identities.
It's difficult to describe the jolt his films deliver when [Woo]'s on, and he is on with a vengeance here.
Watching John Travolta and Nicolas Cage square off and literally exchange roles brings back the old-fashioned pleasure of astutely judged movie star pairings in a major way.
A dizzying, beautiful ride.
This is grand moviemaking with grand acting.
Though the plotting is preposterous, this is John Woo's most successful American movie, demonstrating his unique signature as auetur applied to a a blockbuster.
Overwrought, sci-fi crime thriller. Not for kids.
Watching Travolta and Cage play dual hero and dual villain roles remains the most enjoyable aspect
This brutal, stunningly choreographed spectacle weaves together lyrical beauty, blasphemy, sadistic cruelty and grotesque sentimentality with breathtakingly smooth assurance.
Sets new standards for a genre which plays it safe and predictable too often.
Typical for Woo, the sheer force of the imagery is supposed to carry viewers past plot absurdities ... while at the same time, the director wants the audience to buy into the emotional lives of his obsessed and haunted characters.
This is your action movie on drugs--any questions? [Blu-Ray]
The action sequences are among the most intense and exhilarating you'll see in any film.
The dramatic scenes have emotional gravity, while the exhilarating action sequences defy gravity.
Garbage of the finest vintage.
...director John Woo takes an incredibly silly premise and despite its limitations turns it into an entertaining thrill ride.
... this operatic 1997 action thriller remains John Woo's most satisfying and exhilarating film since leaving Hong Kong for Hollywood.
The DVD extras start with two full-length audio commentaries, one by director John Woo, and a second by writers Mike Web and Michael Colleary.
the over-the-top action is underlined with characterization and emotion, albeit in an often heightened form that is more familiar to Asian audiences
possibly the greatest, and definitely the most exuberant, action film to come out of the studio system in the '90s
Woo's poetic-kinetic style has evolved, if not to the point of abstraction, then to delirium: he makes a virtue of incredulity.
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
July 29, 2010Super Reviewer
Face/Off was a good action film, and probably one of the better films of Nicholas Cage. I quite enjoyed the film considering that both Nick Cage and John Travolta are so-so actors. The concept for the film was good, and quite interesting. But the film is far from perfect. I very much enjoyed the film, but I felt that
October 26, 2011
Super Reviewer
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