Rated:
Not for sale to persons under age 18.
Starring:  John Travolta,  Nicolas Cage, et al.
Director: John Woo

Edition Details:
• Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen
•Theatrical trailer(s)
• Widescreen anamorphic format
• ASIN: 630512762X 

Editorial Reviews

At his best, director John Woo turns action movies into ballets of blood and bullets grounded in character drama. Face/Off marks Woo's first American film to reach the pitched level of his best Hong Kong work (Hard-Boiled). He takes a patently absurd premise--hero and villain exchange identities by literally swapping faces in science-fiction plastic surgery--and creates a double-barreled revenge film driven by the split psyches of its newly redefined characters. FBI agent Sean Archer (John Travolta) must play the villain to move through the underworld while psychotic terrorist Castor Troy (Nicolas Cage) becomes a perversely paternal family man while using every tool at his disposal to destroy his nemesis. Travolta vamps Cage's tics and flamboyant excess with the grace of a dancer after his transformation from cop to criminal, while Cage plays the sullen, bottled-up agent excruciatingly trapped behind the face of the man who killed his son. His attempts to live up to the terrorist's reputation become cathartic explosions of violence that both thrill and terrify him. This is merely icing on the cake for action fans, the dramatic backbone for some of the most visceral action thrills ever. Woo fills the screen with one show-stopping set piece after another, bringing a poetic grace to the action freakout with sweeping camerawork and sophisticated editing. This marriage of melodrama and mayhem ups the ante from cops-and-robbers clichés to a conflict of near-mythic levels. --Sean Axmaker

From Leonard Maltin's Movie & Video Guide
Two thirds of a terrific movie: Federal agent Travolta agrees to have a heinous criminal's face grafted onto his own, in order to fool the no-good's brother into spilling vital information. But the daring plan goes awry in more ways than one. Travolta and Cage are charismatically over the top, and Woo's staging of action scenes is powerfully good... but the film doesn't know when to stop, with one too many of everything. Silly plotting and dialogue might have been overlooked in a tighter film.

¡@

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

A Superb Action Film., February 13, 2000
Reviewer: Alci Rengifo from El Paso, Texas
John Woo's "Face/Off" is one of the best of all action films because it isn't just driven by great action sequences and style, its true force is behind the great performances by Nicolas Cage and John Travolta. What's amazing here is how we are completely convinced that one character is suddenly playing another with the other's face on. This isn't just a showcase of superb, hyper action, but also of great acting. Travolta incredibly seems to have Cage's first role and Cage seems to perfectly be Travolta's first role. Now about the action, it's also superbly done. No one films violence like John Woo, who gives gunfights here an artistic quality in the moves, the guns, the clothes, the way the camera moves. There is a shoot-out near the end inside a chapel and Woo let's us see the bullets in slow motion blast out from the barrels. He doesn't make action boring as do some other action filmmakers, he gives it tremendous art potential. "Face/Off" is never boring, always active and has enough plot for an entire series. The screenplay is full of imagination and the entire film is rich in detail. I have seen few action films done so well. Many of that kind are rare like "The Rock." Woo has a great eye for style that vibrates off the screen. "Face/Off" is a fantastic action piece because it's driven more by it's actors and performances than by it's action sequences. This one deserves to be seen more than twice!