Face/Off

Saw Face/Off, a fairly ridiculous movie by John Woo. It's one of his first Hollywood films and tries to do that Chinese thing of super-shmaltzy melodrama. The opening shows the protagonist, in some kind of filial-love-induced perpetual swoon, at a carnival that is shot entirely in slow motion and soft-focus. It's the happiest happy that has ever happied. Later, disaster strikes and it's the saddest sad that has ever been. The film is is great fun, but it's unclear if it's in on the joke.

The plot is that an FBI agent must find a bomb that a criminal mastermind has hidden in the city but the mastermind is in a coma, so the agent goes to a secret clinic where they transplant the criminal's face onto the FBI agent's face. This is insane but only the first of many insanities, so okay. Later on there's a magnetic-shoed prison and many boffo shootouts. There's kind of a half-hearted and embarrassing theme of identity where in order to infiltrate the gang the FBI agent must become the criminal, in a way, compromising his morals and beating up cops. It's fairly weak however and could be used as evidence that John Woo doesn't have a sense of humor about this film.

Either way though, this is a great bad movie, in the vein of Con Air. Also the criminal (and later face-swapped FBI agent) is played by Nicholas Cage in full-throated crazy-face mode. The FBI agent (later face-swapped criminal) is John Travolta who puts in a game showing although of course he can't hold a candle to Cage. The plot is ridiculous but that's part of the fun. Thank heavens it wasn't some dour meditation on violence and masculinity. It may have been serious but feels more like a send-up to me.