Famend Hong Kong motion director John Woo’s first enterprise to Hollywood was nice for us followers however irritating for the acclaimed filmmaker. 1993’s “Exhausting Goal” and 1996’s “Damaged Arrow” have been bullet-riddled blasts however they got here with intrusive studio administration. It wasn’t till 1997’s “Face/Off” that Woo was lastly given the inventive management wanted to inform the form of story he wished to inform and make the form of film he wished to make.

“Face/Off” was an enormous hit each critically and commercially and the movie has aged extremely properly. With out query a serious a part of the film’s success was Woo who introduced his full arsenal of action-fueled model and creativeness to the movie. However equally as essential was the unquestioned expertise and charisma of the movie’s two leads, John Travolta and Nicolas Cage. Each tackle twin roles in portraying the identical two characters (sound complicated?) and so they completely crush it.

Travolta performs performs FBI Agent Sean Archer, the chief of a covert anti-terrorist unit devoted to taking down a ruthless worldwide terrorist and murderer named Castor Troy (Cage). For Archer the pursuit of Troy is private. Six years earlier Troy tried to assassinate Archer, inadvertently killing Archer’s younger son Michael as an alternative. Since then Archer has been pushed to convey his nemesis down, culminating in a violent shootout at a distant airstrip that leaves a number of of Archer’s workforce lifeless and Troy in a coma.

However Archer’s victory is short-lived after Troy’s captured youthful brother and confederate Pollux (Alessandro Nivola) reveals {that a} bomb has been positioned someplace in a densely populated space of Los Angeles. However he refuses to surrender the situation. Out of choices, a annoyed Archer is launched to a top-secret and extremely experimental process headed by Dr. Malcolm Walsh (Colm Feore) that simply would possibly assist persuade Pollux to disclose the bomb’s location.

Archer agrees to the process which has Troy’s face, voice, and physique look transplanted to him. From there Archer, who now appears to be like and seems like Troy (and is now performed by Cage), is distributed to the identical high-security penitentiary the place Pollux is being held. However whereas he’s on his undercover mission to win Pollux’s belief, the true Castor Troy wakes up and forces Dr. Walsh to place Archer’s face on him. Troy then kills everybody who is aware of concerning the mission, leaving Archer languishing in jail and caught as Troy with no method of proving his true identification.

It goes with out saying that “Face/Off” has a bonkers premise, however Woo does an amazing job making it thrilling, suspenseful, and at occasions surprisingly heartfelt. He injects lots of his favourite logos from the fashionable slow-motion, dual-wielding pistols, and swish white doves. All of these issues on prime of his methodical pacing, regular stress constructing, and layered storylines.

The motion is top-notch whether or not its intensely choreographed gunfights or jaw-dropping (and costly) set items. As for the storytelling, it ranges from humorous and over-the-top to downright unsettling. Cage’s wild-man demeanor comes out on a number of events and you may’t assist however chortle. On the identical time, Travolta slithers beneath your pores and skin portraying Troy, particularly as he infiltrates Archer’s household. His scenes with Archer’s spouse Eve (Joan Allen) and their troubled teen daughter Jamie (Dominique Swain) can legitimately make you squirm.

In a time when the motion style appears to battle to seek out its identification, it says one thing that the 27-year-old “Face/Off” nonetheless holds up in opposition to a lot of what passes for motion cinema at the moment. It’s classic John Woo who reveals why he’s such an enormous display screen legend. And it’s a wildly entertaining showcase for John Travolta and Nicolas Cage, each of whom have been within the heydays of their careers. So if you happen to’ve by no means seen “Face/Off” or it has been some time, what higher time. It’s now accessible to personal on 4K Extremely HD courtesy of Kino Lorber.