Movies That Settle: Face\Off

Let me start by saying that I missed my goal of posting a new piece in September, so sorry to anyone who was Jones-ing for one. Life happens. If you are that disappointed, this one is extra-long, but I have to put the Pay wall back up. Dursy’s gotta eat.

Before I get to that, though, Here’s what I’ve been up to:

I finally got the full trade of Joker/Harley: Criminal Sanity by Kami Garcia and Mico Suayan. I had originally bought the individual issues, but missed #5, so I decided to buy the trade. Side note: if anyone wants to buy my copies of the original issues, minus #5, let me know (They are in excellent condition (tm).

I also picked back up Manhood for Amateurs: The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father, and Son by Michael Chabon. I bought this years ago, but I am finally getting around to it. I guess I finally feel man enough.

*****

I usually write about movies that I don't like, or movies that I liked at one time and now dislike, because they don’t age very well. Occasionally, I write about movies that I do like and go on and on about why I like them. But recently, I came across a movie that I didn’t like, even when I saw it back in the day, but for some reason, I have never been able to dismiss it outright as a bad movie.

Back in the 90’s, I was quite enthralled by the films of John Woo, and had seen them all and liked them all, even the silly American ones. His obsession of using doves as a way to show beauty in the middle of a gunfight (or whatever he was showing) got a little out of hand, and I don’t think anyone ever ran out of bullets in a John Woo movie, but I was young and dumb and was craving something a little different and latched on to this guy. What else was there in the mid-90’s?

In 1997, I was anticipating the release of the next John Woo-directed shoot-’em-up, Face/Off, starring John Travolta (on his third comeback, at least) and Nicholas Cage, who had won an Oscar for 1995’s Leaving Las Vegas, and followed that up with The Rock, Con Air and now Face/Off, so the dude had obviously decided that he didn’t need to make good movies anymore. I had remembered that Woo had made some disparaging remarks about Jean-Claude Van Damme after making his first movie State-side, Hard Target, but here he was working with Travolta for a second time (Broken Arrow being the first), so they must have a connection, right? Was it enough to get my hopes up?

Well, here’s a hope-dasher; if you didn’t know already, the plot of this piece of “cinema” was that super-cop Travolta captured his arch-nemesis played by Cage, and he and his FBI posse hatched a scheme to literally and surgically switch bodies with him in order to infiltrate his camp to find out the code to disarm a big bomb located somewhere in Los Angeles and scheduled to go off in a few days. The fact that everyone just believes the bad guy when he says there’s a big bomb is the first red flag, but whatever. It really doesn’t matter why he has to do it because it’s an idea that only movie people come up with. I know there are undercover agents and stuff, but would any real FBI division come up with the idea to actually switch their guy out with the bad guy? Maybe it happens all the time and they just don’t tell us because nobody would believe it anyway.

My original plan was to write about what a dumb idea this was, but it should be noted that face transplants are a real thing now, used to help people who have been disfigured from burns or birth defects. Apparently, a professor Peter Butler wrote an article about it in 2002, and of course, people were up in arms about the ethics of the procedure, because it involves taking actual facial tissue from actual people. According to Wikipedia, the first full face transplant took place in Spain in 2010, and anyone who undergoes the procedure has to take medication for the rest of their lives to “suppress their immune system and fight off rejection.” It actually all sounds pretty cool, and I’m not going to dicker too much with the science of the plot, because it’s still just a movie (and they kind of did it in Darkman). However, this was supposed to be taking place in 1997, leading me to wonder if Peter Butler was just a big fan of John Woo when he wrote that article in 2002. And really, technology-wise, 1997 was a long way off from 2002 (I was dating a girl who had a pager in 1997), and light years behind 2010, so when people saw this in 1997, I doubt too many people thought, “This could totally happen.” I know I thought it was totally ri-cock-ulous .

Also, they weren’t just switching faces and going about their lives. They had to alter their voices, hairlines, and there’s even a comment about removing Travolta’s love handles so he could look the part a little better. And then they had to go and fool their own loved ones. Of course, there are all kinds of silly reasons why this was the best-case scenario in order to disarm this bomb, with the main one being that these men are mortal enemies and Cage actually killed Travolta’s son six years earlier in a brutal act of vengeance, so they knew each other inside and out. So in movie-logic, it had to be Travolta to do the infiltrating, rather than someone who is actually trained in undercover work. 

Of course, after the initial surgery, Travolta is inserted into the same prison block as Cage’s brother to get the skinny on the bomb. Naturally, a faceless Cage then awakens and takes Travolta’s face and then uses it to infiltrate the FBI. The operation was apparently so hush-hush that almost nobody knew about it, and he and his gang kill the few people who did. Cage, figuring it’s better to play the long game posing as fake Travolta, then disarms his own bomb and becomes the big hero. Real Travolta, who is now Fake Cage, then has to escape from prison, because nobody knows he’s there, and he runs to Cage’s gang hideout, because.. Reasons. You could say that one of the reasons is that they are becoming their bitter rival, and it fuels the plot, but you would think that Travolta would have some friend or someone he could turn to to explain this whole thing. Even recapping it now, the plot sounds pretty ridiculous, and in 1997, before we had seen Tom Cruise do it in every Mission Impossible movie (except the first one, which was released in 1996), it was even more silly. The real question is, did it have to be that way?

In my youth (and, ok, my adulthood), I was a big fan of the G.I. Joe toys, cartoons and comics, because army stuff was just cool to me. As time went on, however, it became apparent that the entire point of the venture was to sell toys, and the realism was a distant second because, y’know, how many tanks can you sell? You need more stuff. One of these newer toys was an evil agent of COBRA named Zartan, whose specialty was “master of disguise.”

I don’t know if it was ever fully explained how he did it, other than nebulous “ancient mystic martial arts,” but he could actually alter his skin like a chameleon. They didn’t really need to explain it because the whole point was they had come up with this process that would allow the Zartan action figure to change color when exposed to the sun, so they figured they would use it. But the comic book and cartoon used him in more inventive ways, saying that he could use make-up and even holographic technology to infiltrate or hide from G.I. Joe. To further this point, the action figure did come with a mask, so there was some synergy between the different outlets.

The point is, there was probably a better way to do Face\Off than having the two men actually switch faces (although they would have to come up with a new name, I guess.), since G.I. Joe had done it years before, and while it was still pretty unbelievable, it was somehow less implausible than face-swapping. But perhaps the more important question is this; was Face\Off a silly movie simply because they surgically switched faces? Definitely not, as there were certainly other elements of the ridiculous in it, but it certainly started out behind the 8-ball.

So what happened here?

First, let me waste some time talking about the positives. I’ll start with my favorite scene: Travolta apparently had a strained relationship with his teenage daughter after the death of his son, and she lashed out at him by dressing like a goth chick and generally being rebellious. Once Cage took over Travolta’s life, they had a different relationship. One evening, she’s coming home from a date and her suitor wants a little more than she is willing to give him. She tries to shove him off, and causes a ruckus, which brings Cage/Travolta out. He yanks the would-be rapist out of his car window and slams him all over the car repeatedly, sending him packing. Once inside the house, she is angry at this newfound interest her dad is taking in her life, not knowing that it’s a different guy. He offers her a smoke and kind of victim-blames her, stating “Dress up like Halloween, and ghouls will try and get in your pants.” She scoffs, but does take his cigarette. They have a nice chat about her dead brother, which you can assume was the only time they have ever done so. He even suggests that she is “wearing someone else’s face,” which is interesting because that is what he is doing.

He then asks her if she has “protection.” She smirks, thinking he is talking about condoms, and the next shot is a classic Woo-ism: a slow-motion shot of Travolta producing a switchblade.

“Protection.”

In maybe the best line delivery of the whole movie, and possibly Travolta’s career, he brandishes the blade and instructs her, “Next time, let Carl take his pants down, slip this in his thigh, twist it, so the wound won’t close.”

He then folds the knife back up and doesn’t hand it to her, but dangles it in front of her. She gladly takes it, giving the impression that there's a part of her that can’t wait for her next would-be rapist to come along. I mean, I don’t have any kids, but that seems like a pretty good Dad move. Sure, I know women carry mace and rape whistles and everything, but maybe a good knife will send the best message.

Now, because it’s a movie, she uses this very knife during the final battle on her fake father to escape his clutches. I know that is good story-telling, so I won't fault the movie for that, but part of me almost feels bad that here was the villain of the movie, giving an actual good life lesson, and it just comes back to bite him. How’s that for gratitude? 

But that’s basically the coolest element of the movie: everything is reversed. When Travolta as Cage does, in fact, infiltrate the criminal camp, he finds out that the bad guys are kind of like a family, maybe even closer than his actual one, and that his arch-nemesis that he assumed was just a stone-cold lunatic, actually has a son, which is a real kicker when you consider that his own son was murdered by the guy he is impersonating. It is also hinted that Actual Travolta isn’t really great at pleasing his wife, played by Joan Allen, but Fake Travolta seems to get some jollies by, as he so eloquently tells his nemesis, “boning your wife.” And it seems like she doesn’t mind it, either. Fake Travolta also seems to enjoy the respect that he gets at work, so much that he surreptitiously murders his boss so he can move up the ranks. Obviously, Real Travolta wouldn’t have killed anyone to get a promotion, but I get the feeling that he also wouldn’t ever have even asked for one.

These are the elements that I would keep if I were to be given the reins to a Face/Off re-make (Not that I ever would, but it’s fun to imagine.) In fact, it wouldn’t have nearly as much action, so people might be disappointed, but then again, maybe not. Let’s face it, it’s the action which makes this movie into the mess that it is. Even as a Woo fan, I thought a lot of this was over-the-top. And for a movie called “Face\Off,” you would think they could have done a better job of hiding when they are using Cage and Travolta’s stunt doubles.

Who do you think these guys are?

This is the real problem of the movie. There’s a silly premise for sure, but maybe enough meat on the bone to make for an interesting story if told correctly, and then they throw it all out and make a basic shoot-’em-up. Not that all the action was bad. There are some scenes that work. The scene where the two stars are back-to-back with a mirror between them, and they both turn to shoot and see a reflection that is not their own is pretty cool.

There is also the scene where Cage-as-Travolta is standing over the dead body of his rather uncool brother, who was just killed by his rival, and he ties the dead man’s shoe one final time. 

The problem is all of these cool moments are quickly forgotten when it comes time for the two guys to start shooting everyone and chasing each other in speed boats. The movie runs over two hours, but at least the last 45 minutes is the two stars over-acting, shooting everyone they can and blowing up as many vehicles as possible. The climax comes when Travolta, knowing he is beat, takes a sharp piece of metal and starts cutting his own face up, figuring that even if they switch the two faces back, it’ll be permanently scarred. He does this while Cage has a harpoon gun pointed at him, but Travolta is holding the harpoon in place so it doesn’t fire. Cage then kicks his archenemy in the balls, causing him to let go and the harpoon to fire into his gut. Cage then yells at him to “DIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!” as only he can.

They then reverse the face transplant and Travolta (as the good guy again) adopts Cage’s son as his own, since the baby-mama was killed earlier, and I guess Travolta needed a new son.

It was the only way this movie was going to end, because it was directed by John Woo and starred two pretty bad actors. But I can’t help but think about what happened to this family after all this trauma; the wife sleeping with the man who killed her son, thinking it was her husband would seem to leave some scars. Then the husband adopting the son of his archrival after he killed the boy’s father would seem to be even more of a kick in the nuts than the actual kick in the nuts he gave him just before he murdered him. They could have at least included a post-credit scene with Travolta and his wife in marriage counseling. 

Hey, if you want to see Nic Cage and John Travolta kill a lot of people and blow some stuff up, then this is the movie for you, and far be it from me to judge anyone who is a fan (And the movie has a 82% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, and a surprisingly high 92% critics score, so it does have its fans.). But I still think I would enjoy my psychological thriller version better. Think about it: Bad guy takes over the good guy’s life, has a better relationship with his daughter, has better sex with his wife, and gets along better with his co-workers. Meanwhile, the good guy inserts himself into the bad guy’s life, and finds that he has a son and a baby-mama that need caring for, and cronies that like to party with him. So each character supplies the traits that the other lacks in their own lives. It’s like the Seinfeld episode where George acted as Jerry’s “Relationship Intern,” because neither one could handle a relationship with a woman alone. In Face/Off, neither Travolta nor Cage could handle their own lives. It could almost make for a whole series, as long as there were better actors. And they didn’t actually take their faces off. 

Since this is the movie we got, I guess I’ll just have to wait for some streamer to decide it’s time for a re-make. In the meantime, check out all things Dursin here. Thanks for reading and keep on keepin’ on.