Face/Off
1997
John Woo
I swear I didn't set it up this way, but I basically watched Grease, Xanadu, and Face/Off all in the same week, all three involving some combo of the same two people (Danny and Sandy). A trio of movies that together can basically prove without a shadow of a doubt the theory that movies are meant to be taken unseriously as possible. Who needs film scholarship and intense debates when you're watching basically the most ridiculous bullshit ever made. We bent over backward to defend Xanadu as a fun exercise for people who don't think about plot failures too much, and Grease became only the second of 110 family movie night movies that my kids couldn't make it through the whole way, since it's basically two hours of sexual innuendos that went right over their innocent little heads. On Face/Off, meanwhile, John Travolta and Nicholas Cage swap faces.
They pull it off! It was a fun movie. When I say "pulled it off," I mean that an absurd premise does not automatically make for a great film. Just look at The Human Centipede, basically a no-miss idea for a banger of a movie that somehow manages to be boring. Face/Off takes its premise and is able to craft it into a fun little two-hour-plus thrill ride (tempted to say it's actually less than two hours, if you put all the millions of slow-motion moments into regular speed). There are lots of dumb moments and dumb shoot-'em-all set pieces and dumb dialogue between dumb characters. Nicholas Cage acts so absurd that it outdoes Abed's Nicholas Cage impression. I can't decide whether John Travolta does a worse job playing Nicholas Cage or playing John Travolta. And again, the premise is that they switch faces. Nothing about this fucking movie should work. But if you turn off your brain for a little bit, somehow, against all odds, it does indeed work.
So in that spirit, let's turn our brains off for a couple minutes within this very blog post. This is the first of our "Seen It" solo series, in which members of Film Club chose movies for me to watch that they themselves have already seen. I'll be asking each of those members to send me a question or prompt that will help me fill some blog space when I'm writing about their chosen movie. Kait implored me to watch Face/Off, and then recently sent me this question, that I will now answer, in the wake of seeing one of the most fun dumb movies it's ever been my privilege to see:
"Who would you face swap with?"
I'm assuming that you, the person reading these words, would not be doing so if you haven't seen Face/Off, so I will not worry about spoilers, nor will I worry about explaining the plot. It's unforgettable, that plot. But so if you're here and you already know that the premise is that a highly advanced scientific method for switching faces has been invented, and that, through preposterous circumstance, an FBI agent and a criminal end up swapping faces, then you won't need for me to tell you that, based on the experiences that I witnessed in this film about swapping faces, I don't think I'd swap with anyone. Or at the very least, I wouldn't want to swap faces without someone without my friends and loved ones knowing full well what I was doing. If Johnny Travolta had just told his wife that he was volunteering for the face-swapping gig, then it probably would've saved a whole lot of trouble for all involved.
I was distracted for a second with the final sentence in the Wikipedia intro paragraph: "A sequel is in development." With no source noted, I have to assume that this means the sequel is not actually in development, but is instead theoretically in development, as literally every possible legasequel must be in today's day and age. But here's a fun thought experiment: what would be a good plot for the sequel to Face/Off, which will from here on out officially be called Face // Off? Kait's hilarious question has given me a good idea. Bear with me as I spend the next beefy paragraph explaining my vision.
Okay, so it's meta sequel (sorry, this idea probably sprung to mind because I mentioned The Human Centipede, whose sequel is hilariously meta), starring John Travolta and Nicholas Cage, except they are playing themselves this time. And there are two other main characters, an FBI agent and a criminal, except they are childhood friends, and though they clash because of their chosen fields of work, they ultimately have an unbreakable bond over their shared love of the classic movie Face/Off. And they are determined to make a sequel happen. So they send obsessive fan mail to Travolta and Cage, who are ignoring them and eventually filing stay-away orders. The only thing is, the FBI agent and criminal (played by Glen Powell and Wyatt Russell respectively, in a mini Everybody Wants Some!! reunion) have a scientist friend, and this scientist has perfected the art of face-swapping in real life. So they capture Travolta and Cage, and swap faces with them, meaning that the FBI agent and criminal now are able to get Face // Off off the ground, while Travolta and Cage (played by Powell and Russell) have to figure out how to break up the Hollywood movie production and get their faces back. Wikipedia tells me that John Travolta is good friends with Pitbull, so maybe he can factor into this somehow, like maybe he also plays himself, and is the one to finally figure out that there's something off about his good buddy Danny Zuko. Pitbull can also write a song that plays over the credits whose lyrics explain the plot of the movie that you just watched.
Sorry, I know that avoids the question, but it felt more appropriate to answer the question that way, for such a movie. I think if I were to take it seriously, like explore the moral ramifications of becoming god and switching the bodies of humans (basically), along with their souls (basically?), then that leads down a deep, dark path which ends with me taking Face/Off seriously as a film, which I refuse to do. To enjoy Face/Off requires a leap of faith that this is a movie and it is supposed to be silly. If you take it seriously, then you're gonna have a bad time. Seriously, I refused to take it seriously and spent much of its runtime laughing and I still got, like, physically ill during the face-switching scene. It was bizarre. It hit me out of nowhere. The closest thing it felt to was when I got nauseous as the doctor was explaining to me how vasectomies work. It was not a mental reaction, it was a purely physical reaction; I know that snipping the vas deferens is medically safe and that face-swapping is not even fucking real, but my body revolted. I had to take a break.
I'm glad I made it back. Gina Gershon is hot. I was gonna make a joke about switching faces with her husband, but it looks like she is currently single. See? Who needs face-swapping? It's possible to be horny online and ethical about it.
Much props to the filmmakers here for taking a bonkers idea and stretching it to its limit. I appreciate all the guns and fights and prison-breaks and slow-motion double-crossing. I think 138 minutes was probably enough, though. No more. No sequels, please, unless you're gonna take the idea from PoYB.
GRADE: 3 pukes out of 5
NEXT TIME: Half of Film Club is escaping from New York in Escape from New York.
5 comments:
No Cap. This is a great idea for a movie.
My original fear was that Scientology would put a stop to it, but they didn't put a stop to Travolta starring in that terrible Fred Durst movie, so maybe the sky is the limit here.
I think it would help if the face-swapping doctor is reprised by Colm Feore. Is he 30 years older than Glen Powell and Wyatt Russell? Yes. But will audiences go wild when they see him on-screen? Probably not. But will it enhance the experience of watching Face//Off? Unclear. I had to look up the actor's name to make this joke.
Powell-as-Travolta and Russell-as-Cage have a separate scientist friend, but in order to make this as close to the original as possible, they find actor Colm Feore in retirement, and force him to swap faces with the scientist.
I would watch that sequel. And funny enough this movie was a Linsner family movie night classic.
Post a Comment