Face/Off (1997)
Directed by John Woo
In order to foil a terrorist plot, an FBI agent undergoes facial transplant surgery and assumes the identity of a criminal mastermind. The plan turns sour when the criminal wakes up prematurely and seeks revenge.
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17 films that influenced Face/Off
What critics say influenced Face/Off
You'd think no director could possibly pull off that kind of Grand Guignol medical procedure -- even though the whole idea has echoes of Georges Franju's 1959 French horror classic "Eyes Without a Face."
It causes one to note that Woo and company nod at - or rip off - Orson Welles' "The Lady from Shanghai" when Archer, wearing Troy's face, and Troy, in Archer's face, try to gun each other down in a room full of mirrors.
The hallucinatory force of "Face/Off's" central idea recalls the peak film noir stories of the '40s (films like "Dark Passage," "The Dark Mirror" or "Kiss of Death").
Woo creates the kind of atmospheric violence of Peckinpah's "The Wild Bunch" or Paul Verhoeven's "RoboCop."
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The hallucinatory force of "Face/Off's" central idea recalls the peak film noir stories of the '40s (films like "Dark Passage," "The Dark Mirror" or "Kiss of Death").
Although Seconds heavily informed later, paranoia-as-puzzle, 1990’s thrillers from David Fincher’s The Game to John Woo’s Face/Off, it doesn’t get hung up on the mechanics of Arthur’s regeneration.
In fact, a better strategy might have been to be as vague as possible about the details (such an approach was used effectively in 1992's Prelude to a Kiss ).
If you're not already having fun, try not to now, with Cage playing Travolta in a futuristic take-off on White Heat.
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Woo creates the kind of atmospheric violence of Peckinpah's "The Wild Bunch" or Paul Verhoeven's "RoboCop."
He has cribbed from Tim Burton (the Beetlejuicey score is by Danny Elfman, the striking sets by Bo Welch), but he has also learned what not to do: The script (based on a comic by Lowell Cunningham) is elegantly shaped, without an extraneous beat, and there's a generosity toward even the most degenerate beasties from beyond.