Face/Off (1997) - Page 2

For me Commando is the best of Arnie's action movies and Cages best is Face off, hence the comparison.

Con Air is a close second though.

When I saw this I was taking a minor, who bought my ticket. They didn't tear my ticket,so I went back two days later with the un-torn ticket I got to see it a second time without paying and when I left the theater found twenty bucks in the street.

This movie is fun, very 90's. You feel the 90's now. Still, action.

Fat Elvis, When you compare Mark Lester's...Career, to John Woo's, Lester Loses. As much as I like...Face Off, Commando is one of...the greatest action films ever made! Give Lester his props, for making a...Classic Film. A film cannot be...Glorious, or great and actually suck!

This was even a popular movie when it came out. I was just out of college, but I distinctly recall the summer films of 1996 and 1997 as being pretty bland (yes, even ID4). Soulless is the word I'd use. FACE/OFF was a breath of fresh air. It was brazenly emotional, and wildly energetic. I was also obsessed with it, and it energized me to get into laserdiscs and home theater. The week or so after this came out, both Jimmy Stewart and Robert Mitchum passed away. There was a collection of critics discussing them and the quality of films that they were in. They all agreed that today's films weren't worthy of them. And then they excepted F/O, saying that would have been a perfect movie for them. I recall that being high praise.

And Joan Allen taking Troy to her son's grave was a ballsy move most summer movies avoid. Beautiful action, great acting, interesting concept, special movie.

Seeing the top billed actors on the poster does draw attention to one of the main differences between 80's and 90's action, which is also in evidence in Face Off. One of Die Hard's main legacies had to be that a decade later casting respectable actors and quirky alternative darlings in action epics seemed perfectly natural. We're so used to it by now that it's easy to forget how fundamentally weird it is that Nic Cage had a successful career as an action hero.

Face Off I used to fucking love, but it's one of a terrifying number of movies I adored in the early days of my film geekdom that I haven't revisited in something like 10 years. In the bits I've seen since the 90'sness of the thing really does shine through clear and true, but that's okay.

I do remember always finding the ending a bit shit. I feel like a climax that properly played on their switched identities would've been better, but instead it was a fairly conventional showdown. Plus the 'hello dear, we don't need to feel sad about our dead son anymore because, look! I've found a replacement son!' happy finale was kind of fucked up.

The idea of embracing the "90s-ness" of a movie is a little foreign to me, and I think it's the age gap again. When these movies were being released I was pretty much writing them off, despite being an early Cage booster due to Raising Arizona, Peggy Sue, Vampire's Kiss, Wild At Heart, Birdy, etc. Nicolas Cage was, for a minute, as exciting an actor as DeNiro or Pacino (with Cazale's hairline) in their prime. His all-in embrace of empty action epics after his Oscar win wasn't anything to celebrate at the time, and we were too busy scarfing up VHS tapes (they were letterboxed!) from this new company called Anchor Bay to really obsess over the multiplex crap. We'd see it, but our passions were elsewhere.

Not a criticism; if anything you're coming at these films from a perspective (I think) distanced from the initial experience, and that's how film history works, more or less.

OR, you guys are going to be seriously rolling your eyes in ten years when a bunch of 22 year-olds are arguing which film best exemplifies the 00s for them: Transformers or Underworld 3.

Well aside from maybe Fleed I doubt you'll find anyone here who doesn't think Cage's career path was disappointing in the long run. But that doesn't mean we have to dismiss those times when his jump into the mainstream resulted in dumb action movies with some actual interesting acting in them. I remember reading an interview with none other than Martin Scorsese where he mentioned being impressed with what Cage brought to Face Off.

Man now I wanna see Robert Mitchum and Jimmy Stewart in Face/Off: 1948.

Kirk Douglas/Burt Lancaster. Kirk is obviously Castor Troy.

The trailer for Face/Off was pretty awesome at the time.

Kirk D and Burt L from Tough Guys???

Well, no.

I wasn't sure how many people would remember Tough Guys.

Richard Widmark as Pollux!

First Class 782, Well, It was, an early role for Dana Carvey. It was after his co-starring role, in the...Classic action series BLUE THUNDER, where he played...Jafo, taking the role from Daniel Stern, who starred in the Roy Schieder film of the same name.

Paul C, Disappointing? Nic Cage starred in classics like...The Rock, Face-Off, Windtalkers (his 2nd John Woo Film), Con Air, Kick-Ass, Ghost Rider and Captain Corelli's Mandolin.

I'll bet Woo would kill to have made that movie.

I watched that trailer for Face/Off again and again back then. The last half of is a pretty generic action trailer, but that first half sold the concept in a pretty clever way.

This is why you two disagree.

Couple of things first the ending with the kid was added on after a few test screenings showed audiences weren't happy with the finale of Travolta or Cage rather going under the knife.

 

I actually like that ending because after all the carnage it adds some hope and redemption for Archer.

 

Also this is one of my favorite teaser trailers. Watch it. http://www.trailerfan.com/movie/face_off-1997-a/trailer

 

" To capture him I have to become him. "

All of this is so correct that I could eat a peach for hours. 

 

And because the cool trailer was brought up, let's make use of the redesign!

 

 

And let's see if this works:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yinIbOy5VI#t=6m32s