Review of Face/Off (1997) by Grambuolys — 17 Nov 2022

One of the best action drama movies I have ever seen. At first glance you'd expect the face surgery to leave obvious marks which would lead to more suspicions. But what works for this movie is how two main characters despite looking alike each other, can't adopt each others' personalities.

They only change their appearance, but that's all. We see how certain moments trigger different reactions, for instance - when Troy visits Archer's son grave. But he has to keep the presence of "Archer" so his true identity won't be exposed.

Also I loved how differently Archer acted in contrast of Troy on the shootout saving the little kid as if it was his own child, what I can guarantee Troy would never do. In some moments he spared lives of police forces' crew members knowing they were Archer's colleagues, one of them was recognized after taking mask off.

As mentioned above, I would've liked main characters to remain their scars. Also their body anatomical proportions are visibly different, as Archer possess of rounder face and bulkier torso, while Troy has sharper chin and thinner body.

Several plot armors can be noticed. Anyways, I'm not a fan of nitpicking in this situation, because Nicolas Cage and John Travolta did great performances. We also had many honorable hilarious moments, especially the Cage's psycho acting! What I admired the most is the concept itself.

There were trivial information around the internet that some people from Hollywood thought this is stupid idea. While I'd agree that this is crazy thing to do in this world, the concept seems to propose an idea of semi-SciFi world where some of surgical advancements come to be possible and thus making Archer to accept the idea of temporarily changing his face in sake of accomplishing his mission.

This film manages to convince us how dangerous is to do such a thing and how everything can go wrong herewith pulling in the drama altogether.