Face/Off (1997) | Sci-Fi Saturdays

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Mission: Impossible will replace your face for a fraction of the cost and angst.

Face/Off is not a subtle film. It is an action film of course. But could it be the thinking man’s action film? Its sci-fi roots set the stage for a bizarre and beautiful film full of shootouts and hammy acting.

First Impressions

The trailer for this testosterone fueled action-flick says everything you need to know about the film. John Travolta is a cop hunting the most dangerous criminal ever. He comes up with the best idea to trap him, and that’s by becoming him. By the end of the speech, Travolta is now Nick Cage. This is followed by 90 seconds of intense action footage of running, jumping, shooting, exploding mayhem–all courtesy of Chinese director John Woo. Let’s get it on, with Face/Off.

Presented below is the trailer for the film.

The Fiction of The Film

At a carousel in a park, FBI Agent Sean Archer (John Travolta) is shot by sociopath Castor Troy (Nicolas Cage) while holding his five-year old son. The bullet injures Archer, but kills the young boy. Six years later Castor hides a massive bomb somewhere in Los Angeles. He attempts to escape at a remote airfield along with his brother Pollux (Alessandro Nivola), but Archer and his team show up and prevent the plane from taking off. Pollux is captured and Archer has a shootout with Castor, forcing the criminal in front of a jet engine which apparently kills him.

Archer returns home to his family, his physician wife Eve (Joan Allen) and rebellious daughter Jamie (Dominique Swain). He tells Eve that it’s almost over, he just needs to stop the bomb that was planted. Unfortunately, Director Lazarro (Harve Presnell) won’t evacuate the city, so Archer goes to the Walsh Institute to undergo a secretive procedure presented to him by Agent Miller (CCH Pounder). She shows him that Castor is still alive, and introduces Dr. Walsh (Colm Feore) who will use surgery to place Castor’s face and on Archer’s skull, making him indistinguishable from the comatose man.

Archer, now in the guise of Troy, is sent to an off-the-books black site, Erewhon prison (an anagram for nowhere). No one knows he is undercover except Miller, Walsh, and his partner Tito (Robert Wisdom). Archer finds it difficult to get into the headspace of Troy, but having been obsessed about this man for so long he has intimate knowledge of psychological profile. He manages to hook up with Pollux, who reveals where the bomb is planted. But before Archer can get extracted, Castor, now wearing Sean’s face, shows up and tells him that all his friends are dead. Using his new position of power, Castor reveals where the bomb is and defuses it himself, becoming a hero of the department.

Eve has a candlelight dinner with the man she believes is her husband, and continues other wifely duties. The next day they go to visit Mike’s grave on the anniversary of his death. Eve feels that Sean is acting a little weird. Meanwhile, Archer stages an escape from the prison, which is located on an old oil rig in the ocean. He goes to visit Castor’s associate Dietrich (Nick Cassavetes) to tell him he wants to kill “Agent Archer” and take his face…off! Back at the Archer residence, Castor instructs Jamie on how to deal with a handsy boyfriend, and gives her a butterfly knife.

Dietrich’s sister, Sasha (Gina Gershon), reveals to Archer that her son Adam is actually his–believing he is Troy. Castor shows up with the FBI and a massive shootout occurs. Dietrich is killed by Castor and Archer kills Pollux. As his star continues to rise at the Bureau, Castor chafes in the guise of good-guy Sean, eventually killing Lazarro and becoming director. Archer risks everything to talk with Eve and manages to convince her that he is her husband, in a villain’s face.

At Lazarro’s funeral Archer makes his move on Castor as a Mexican standoff ensues between the FBI against Archer and Sasha, who is killed. Castor grabs Jamie, but remembering her training she stabs him with the knife he gave her. Archer follows Castor’s escape on a motorboat through the harbor where they run aground and have a spectacular fight, where Castor is killed. When the FBI arrives they already know that Archer is disguised as Troy, thanks to Eve informing them. Archer has the surgery to reverse the procedure, and returns home asking Eve and Jamie if they would mind adopting Sasha’s young boy.

“God, I miss that face!” – Castor Troy

History in the Making

In the catalog of films viewed for Sci-Fi Saturdays, there’s probably no one film that can divide people as much as John Woo’s 1997 action film Face/Off. That division among viewers is core to the themes and imagery of duality throughout the film. Are you Team Travolta or Club Cage? Is the film over-the-top, or just another step in the evolution of action films? The film creates a level of absolute unbelievability that viewers are forced to either scoff at or go along for the ride–which is not an easy decision.

Face/Off (not to be confused with the 1971 hockey film of the same name) was John Woo’s third American production. Woo had made a name for himself in Hong Kong cinema with action films such as A Better Tomorrow, The Killer, and Hard Boiled. He used cinematic elements, including slow-motion, smoke and soft filters, and a myriad of different genre conceits to make his action moments more operatic. His actors would often brandish two hand guns, diving backwards in a slow-mo arc, as they fired upon each other. Doves, or other birds, would fly upwards during these moments which used a moving camera, multiple camera setups, and editing to achieve a surreal pace to the scenes. Woo elevated a simple shootout into a longer and more emotional ballet of violence.

Hollywood took notice of his stylistic choices and in 1993 he released his first American film Hard Target, which starred Jean-Claude van Damme. It was set in Louisiana, but had the same tone and style that fans of Woo had come to enjoy. It is arguably his best film in the decade of American made films which also include Broken Arrow (1996), Mission: Impossible 2 (2000), Windtalkers (2002), and Paycheck (2003). His films between 1993 and 2000 all utilized elements of his signature style creating what might seem like a parody of his films. Face/Off, which re-teamed Woo with Travolta, after having played the rogue Air Force Major in Broken Arrow, was no different. The use, and sometimes overuse, of these signature moments feels derivative and formulaic in their depictions. But for all these moments, Woo was still given a Saturn Award for Best Director that year for his efforts.

Genre-fication

As with a number of other films reviewed over the course of these articles, the question comes up as to whether this particular film is truly science-fiction. It’s not a space opera, or set in a future dystopia. There’s no killer robots or shape changing aliens either. But the main conceit of the film is a surgery that allows one person to wear the face of another, undetected. It’s not the masks and makeup technology from the Mission: Impossible franchise either. This is a permanent procedure that can make one person indistinguishable from another. And while, yes, Face/Off is primarily an action thriller, the roots of this sci-fi medical procedure are a historic part of the genre.

Both the sci-fi and horror genres share elements of amazing and miraculous plastic surgeries. Films like Logan’s Run, where the runners can receive an entirely new face to avoid Sandmen, Looker, which has women that have had a new and amazing plastic surgery being killed, and Seconds all are precursors to the face-swapping technology seen here. In fact, Seconds is probably the closest in theme and tone. In that film, a man changes his appearance completely, leaving his old family and starting a new life. Like the characters in Face/Off he too chafes at the constraints of his new life and the longing for his old one. That film also has elements of horror in it, seeming like a feature-length episode of The Twilight Zone. But other films more akin to horror like Eyes Without A Face and the more recent Death Becomes Her present the magical transformations of switching bodies and repairing old ones to look like new.

As mentioned above, Face/Off is more of an action film, and as such it utilizes many elements of the genre. Besides John Woo’s signature moments, it features several big action scenes including chasing a plane down a runway with multiple cars and a helicopter, several intricate shoot-outs, and a speed boat chase through a busy harbor. But even some of these traditional action elements bleed into sci-fi. An example is the futuristic prison which, at the time, might have seemed far fetched–as elements of it still do today. This off-the-books black site, which is housed on an old oil rig, is apparently unknown to the likes of Amnesty International and other human rights organizations. It provides prisoners with giant metallic boots which can be magnetically adhered to the ground to prevent them from causing problems. They wear their boots at all times (how do they shower?) except when in the medical facility. This is very much the inception of other Machiavellian prisons such as the electrified floor seen currently in Star Wars: Andor. The creation of this prison for the script speaks to the themes of the overreach of the government and its exertion of control beyond its purview.

Societal Commentary

Action films often feature characters in authority positions that flaunt the law and disregard safety. Whether it’s Stallone’s Cobra who metes out justice with a firm hand, or Murtaugh and Riggs from the Lethal Weapon films that cause property damage wherever they go, the conceit is that the protagonists are the good guys, and they can do what it takes to bring down the bad guys. It’s definitely an idea that arose in the 1980s. Woo’s Face/Off turns that idea on its head, by placing the bad guy into the body of the good guy. Castor uses the authority that Archer has as an FBI agent to further his criminal empire and cause wanton destruction. Somehow it feels worse, since this is the criminal performing these acts. This goes as far as murdering the director of the Bureau and then using Archer’s position to become the new head of the FBI. See my earlier notes about going along for the ride, regardless of logic.

But the main themes of the film deal with identity and self-blame. The impetus for Archer’s career spanning pursuit of Castor is the assassination of his child. Castor intended to kill Archer and Mike ended up being collateral damage. This life-altering moment spurred Archer to bring down Castor, whatever the cost. The cost was apparently the relationship with his wife and daughter, as well as a constant wracking guilt at having lost his child. Archer runs through “what if” scenarios often, wondering how Mike could have been saved. The scar on his chest, from where the bullet left his body and entered Mike, provides a daily reminder that he was the one that put his son in danger. That he was the lucky one. Every day for six years, Archer used that scar to remind himself of the tragedy of losing a child. It became an emotional scar as well. By the end of the film, having stopped Castor’s reign of terror, Archer tells the doctor that he no longer needs that scar. When he returns to his old body, it is gone, serving as a relatively obvious metaphor that the healing has completed.

Both characters in the film have difficulty adapting to living as the other. They are almost caricatures in their depictions. Archer is extremely noble and duty bound, wracked with guilt over the smallest things, becoming an emotional wreck. Castor is the exact opposite. He’s a hedonistic pervert with a desire for destruction and chaos. Having to live in each other’s bodies causes issues for both. Archer must learn to let go of his conscience and embrace the mania that is Castor Troy. He worries that he will go too far and lose himself, and his identity, in the body of this madman. The madman that he has been chasing for most of his career. Castor has a different issue. He could get by on his looks, having everyone believe that he is Sean Archer. But his kinky proclivities, and his appetite for destruction threatens to undo him. Those closest to Archer, especially Eve, begin to notice the odd behavior. Castor just wants to be himself, but he can’t. If he wants to complete the illusion, he needs to live and breathe as Archer, which is too much for him to keep under wraps. Self-identity becomes an important part of the film. Can you stay who you are even if you look like someone else?

The Science in The Fiction

If Face/Off hasn’t strained its credibility by this point, just wait. Because the fundamental moments in the film–the actual surgery to make Archer look like Castor, is some of the most ridiculous science seen on film. Plastic surgery and facial reconstruction has been around for a while, but the 1990s saw some of the first experiments with facial replacement. They looked nothing like the events depicted in the film. Pictures of individuals with new faces do not come out looking like John Travolta or Nic Cage. They appear to be individuals that have had severe facial trauma, which becomes a functional replacement, not perfection. The laser scalpels that remove the faces trace a simple line around the outside of the face, allowing the doctors to simply lift it off, like a mask. Nevermind the muscles, nerves, and other fascia that connect the “face” to the skull. The doctors also leave Castor, who is in a coma, with no face. His face is bandaged while Sean’s skin floats in a jar. Imagine the risk for infection on this type of procedure. That must be what’s revolutionary about it.

The surgery also alters the bone structure and other elements by using a “morphogenetic template,” whatever that is. Doctor Walsh indicates several times that all of this is temporary. Quite a lot of effort, pain, and toil for something that could be better achieved through makeup and prosthetics. But that’s the point of this. Makeup can be seen through. It’s not foolproof. This surgery is intended to fool the people closest to the characters. The healing phase is glossed over, but the doctor does mention it takes days and not weeks. Definitely a science-fiction premise in 1997 and still one today as well.

The Final Frontier

Face/Off completes a trilogy of Nic Cage action films that get progressively more insane and outrageous, all of which were released within two years of each other. It begins with 1996s The Rock, where he plays the office bound terrorism expert that must go into the field reluctantly with Sean Connery to stop a group of rogue soldiers from releasing a viral plague on San Francisco. This was followed in early 1997 by ConAir. Cage is an inmate who is being transferred via cargo plane with some of the most violent and crazy psychopaths in the prison system. He just wants to see his daughter again. It has the longest runway ever filmed in an action sequence, since Die Hard 2. That is, until Face/Off was released later in the year. The scene of the plane taxiing on the runway makes it seem like that location is miles longer than it is.

The film also is not subtle about its duality. Castor has a brother named Pollux, who are named after the mythical twin founders of Rome. Together they become symbolic of the astrological sign Gemini, which is opposite Sagittarius on the wheel of astrology. Sagittarius is also known as the archer, as in Sean Archer–Castor’s equal and opposite force. The blood types of the characters also come into play, with that being the way Eve determines that the man with Castor Troy’s face is really her husband. Archer is blood type O-negative, which is the universal donor blood type. Castor is AB, which is the universal recipient. Even their blood types display their personality types, as Archer gives all he can, while Castor only takes.

Face/Off is most definitely a wild ride. Credibility aside, John Woo’s directing takes what could have been a B-level picture and elevates it to something greater than the sum of its parts. Both Travolta and Cage chew the scenery throughout, but also create characters that are a joy to watch. Travolta is able to capture Cage’s off-the-hook mania creating a decidedly creepy father figure who will do almost anything. While Cage creates a super-conflicted agent that must learn to come to terms with his new looks and position. It may not be the traditional sci-fi film that fans expect, but it certainly is not short on elements that will hold an audience’s attention.

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