MUSEUM of DITHERED POSTERS

11/20/2023: FACE/OFF (1998)

I’ve heard a lot about this movie but never seen it before. I love Nic Cage though, and he brings one of his most unhinged performances right out of the gate.

(I proceeded to watch the entire movie in awe and forgot to write anything until it was over)

It was everything I hoped it would be and more. Travolta’s and Cage’s impressions of each other were hilarious. The action was over-the-top. And there were also a handful of intense moments where the writers really considered what it would be like to occupy someone else’s body.

Face/Off is essentially 2 hours and 18 minutes of baffling story choices, but these are part of the charm and I won’t offer any notes on them. There’s one choice in particular, though, that I think was wrong, and it’s going to take minute to even explain where we’re at in the film.

In the prologue (which I actually approve of, go figure), terrorist Castor Troy (Cage) attempts to assassinate his arch nemesis, FBI agent Sean Archer (Travolta). The bullet passes through Archer and kills his toddler son Mikey instead.

Then the premise of the movie happens - Archer swaps faces with a comatose Troy in order to go undercover. Eventually he ends up at Troy’s hideout, where he discovers that Troy has a son that was about Mikey’s age when he died. This is where the mistake happens. Archer begins to lavish the kid with affection and calls him Mikey over and over. Does Archer do this with every blond child he sees? I thought for sure he was going to struggle with the temptation to kill this kid to get back at Troy, and his ability to restrain himself would set him apart from the terrorist.

It seems like such a small detail, but Archer’s whole tortured backstory revolves around Mikey’s death. He mentions the scar on his own body multiple times. Revenge is the entire reason he went to such absurd lengths to foil Troy’s plans. Here Archer has the perfect opportunity to restore symmetry, to exact poetic justice, but instead he behaves like a cartoon. Fine, let Archer mistake this stranger for his own son. But then when the kid’s mother brings him back to reality, include a beat where he grabs a knife or a gun or something and really contemplates murdering a toddler.

Anyway, the boat chase was pretty neat.