Updated: 16 November 1997

FACE/OFF

Hmm. I don't want to seem like a stick-in-the-mud, but after having seen a few of these Summer Blockbuster types, I have to say that I expect more from an action film than this. THE LOST WORLD had spectacular special effects, a great cast, and a director whom we know is brilliant. Why then wasn't it a great film instead of merely eye-candy? AIR FORCE ONE had a sizzling performance by Harrison Ford and an equally sizzling performance by a souped-up jumbo jet, but disintegrated from a preposterous premise that I was prepared to accept for the sake of thrills, into a series of clichés that I wasn't quite as prepared to accept.

But that was OK. Because I had yet to see FACE/OFF. With terrific reviews for both director and stars, and kind references to an obviously far-fetched plot as being merely a device to transport us to the place where the fun is, I admit I had high hopes.

I have now watched it for the second time. The first go-around was while it was in the theaters. The second was here on my TV. So here is the comprehensive review:

This show starts off on the right foot. It hires some very good people to portray both its heroes and its villains and its heroes who play villains and vice-versa. Once again, John Travolta turns in an outstanding performance. He is really incredible in this film, both as detective Sean Archer, and as the Sean Archer's face embodied by Nicolas Cage's bad guy--Castor Troy. While Cage is wonderful as Troy, once he swaps characters with Travolta, he loses the edge to his co-star. At first, I thought this might be because Travolta has the easier time of it. He goes from a bland sort of detective character to a criminal that had been played very distinctly--thus easy to copy--by Cage. Whereas Cage has the harder task of going from a very flamboyant character to this flat cop. But now I'm not so sure. What makes Travolta's performance so keenly on-the-mark is not how he captured the villain, but how he manages to pick up the nuances of Nicholas Cage himself. Often, you could sit with your eyes closed and think you were hearing Cage, when it was actually Travolta speaking the lines. Not that you'd want to keep your eyes closed, because you would then miss out on some of John Woo's specially set up shots.

Which brings us to an otherwise good show's flaw. This is a movie that takes style seriously. Oliver Wood, the cinematographer, had no small task in FACE/OFF. In addition to shooting multiple action shots that have to make some degree of narrative sense {incidently, this is something not all films do today. The two most recent forays into Gotham City have eschewed comprehensible fighting altogether, in favor of scenes that look like they were edited by blind eight-year-olds}, Mr. Wood had to shoot these same scenes with loads of metaphors and visual double-entendres imposed by a director with some very specific ideas about irony.

This is not a bad thing. I like style. It is lamentably absent from too many films today. Perhaps, in light of today's visual anemia, the surplus of scenery in FACE/OFF can be seen as merely a counter-balance to the prevailing bland and unimaginative mediocrity.

I could understand that. But the film's sense of style is also it's weak point. The look of the movie so overwhelms everything else that no other single element can really survive the movie. How can I put this more succinctly? ...Basically, the visual part of the film is stressed as being so important that I, for one, no longer found myself caring about the outcome in the movie. "How the outcome looks is more important than what it is," the director seemed to be saying to me. There was a sacrifice of believable moments that would have added the necessary tension to the fighting scenes. The sacrifices were made in favor of having those on screen do perhaps the less credible thing, but certainly the more aesthetically pleasing.

This really hurt the movie's centerpiece: an assault on a criminal hideout/fortress by the FBI & a S.W.A.T. unit. There was a child stuck in the middle of a huge gunfight. Glass is flying and bullets are ricocheting and blood is spilling--all to the tune of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow." The child was stuck in the middle of this, I think, to heighten tension. But at the same time I was thinking about how magnificent the whole thing looked, I realized that I was observing it the same way you would a well-done advertisement. The art might be incredible enough to warrant appreciation, but there is no emotional significance.

I say this despite the fact that the director tried very hard. You don't put Joan Allen into a film that you expect to carry no visceral punches. That lady can bring huge clout into a film.

Nevertheless, there wasn't much at the movie's core. Despite the director's best efforts, his aesthetic thesis and moral thesis didn't have room for each other, and the aesthetic was the only one left by the end of the film.