| Face/Off [Region 2] |  | Director: John Woo
Actors: John Travolta, Nicolas Cage, Joan Allen, Alessandro Nivola, Gina Gershon
Category: DVD
Buy Used: $49.98
as of 2/9/2010 23:26 EST details
Seller: ZoverstocksUSA
Rating:  362 reviews
Format: PAL
Languages: English (Original Language), Latin (Original Language)
Rating: R (Restricted)
Region: 2
Discs: 1
Running Time: 138 Minutes
EAN: 5017188881944
ASIN: B00005957T
Theatrical Release Date: June 27, 1997
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com essential video
At his best, director John Woo turns action movies into ballets of blood and bullets grounded in character drama. Face/Off marks Woo's first American film to reach the pitched level of his best Hong Kong work (Hard-Boiled). He takes a patently absurd premise--hero and villain exchange identities by literally swapping faces in science-fiction plastic surgery--and creates a double-barreled revenge film driven by the split psyches of its newly redefined characters. FBI agent Sean Archer (John Travolta) must play the villain to move through the underworld while psychotic terrorist Castor Troy (Nicolas Cage) becomes a perversely paternal family man while using every tool at his disposal to destroy his nemesis. Travolta vamps Cage's tics and flamboyant excess with the grace of a dancer after his transformation from cop to criminal, while Cage plays the sullen, bottled-up agent excruciatingly trapped behind the face of the man who killed his son. His attempts to live up to the terrorist's reputation become cathartic explosions of violence that both thrill and terrify him. This is merely icing on the cake for action fans, the dramatic backbone for some of the most visceral action thrills ever. Woo fills the screen with one show-stopping set piece after another, bringing a poetic grace to the action freakout with sweeping camerawork and sophisticated editing. This marriage of melodrama and mayhem ups the ante from cops-and-robbers clichés to a conflict of near-mythic levels. --Sean Axmaker
Amazon.com
At his best, director John Woo turns action movies into ballets of blood and bullets grounded in character drama. Face/Off marks Woo's first American film to reach the pitched level of his best Hong Kong work (Hard-Boiled). He takes a patently absurd premise--hero and villain exchange identities by literally swapping faces in science-fiction plastic surgery--and creates a double-barreled revenge film driven by the split psyches of its newly redefined characters. FBI agent Sean Archer (John Travolta) must play the villain to move through the underworld while psychotic terrorist Castor Troy (Nicolas Cage) becomes a perversely paternal family man while using every tool at his disposal to destroy his nemesis. Travolta vamps Cage's tics and flamboyant excess with the grace of a dancer after his transformation from cop to criminal, while Cage plays the sullen, bottled-up agent excruciatingly trapped behind the face of the man who killed his son. His attempts to live up to the terrorist's reputation become cathartic explosions of violence that both thrill and terrify him. This is merely icing on the cake for action fans, the dramatic backbone for some of the most visceral action thrills ever. Woo fills the screen with one show-stopping set piece after another, bringing a poetic grace to the action freakout with sweeping camerawork and sophisticated editing. This marriage of melodrama and mayhem ups the ante from cops-and-robbers clichés to a conflict of near-mythic levels. --Sean Axmaker
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 362
 Great movie, prompt delivery February 4, 2010
J. Blackman (Barbados)
I have watched the movie before and was quite pleased with how quickly it was delivered, the fact that the packaging was adequate (proper protection without being bulky) and the features included on the DVD.
I would recommend this DVD sold by Amazon.
Face/Off December 29, 2009
Arnita D. Brown (USA)
John Travolta, Nicolas Cage, and director John Woo strike platinum in this thriller and heavy action movie. A must-see movie for audiences who love wild action, and a little chill to thrill their emotions. This a awesome movie with some heat.
 Great Movie, Horrible Blu-Ray December 16, 2009
AustralianCx (Sydney, Australia)
I love this movie. If you are reading this, the chances are you love it too and want to see it in a better quality.
This blu ray is nowhere near blu ray. I watched it in a very good Full HD top notch system. (Bowers & Wilkins speakers, Panasonics AE 4000 Projector etc.)
The transfer of the original movie is simply TERRIBLE. There are only few shots that makes you feel that you are watching a bluray. Nowhere near SpiderMan 3 or Baraka.
The people who does the blu ray transfer simply don't care about what they're doing. This is so bad for people who made this film. So bad.
Blu Ray is not a great technology after all. Maybe we people should start asking 4K (Cinema Resolution) or Red Ray (A new technology).
 Woo's Best American Picture so Far September 30, 2009
H. Mario (Texas, USA)
After a rocky start with 'Hard Target', Woo's early American film career continued in an upward trajectory with the underrated 'Broken Arrow', before culminating in this film, a highly characteristic deconstruction of the American thriller. (One might argue that then a disconcerting falling-off began with 'Mission Impossible 2', but that's another matter.) Once again Woo uses Travolta to good effect, establishing him as a preferred actor only this time in a plot that is, to say the least, bizarre. 'Face/Off' - at least to those who carp about such things - is unrealistic, unconvincing and, frequently, just down right silly. In this film it seems, the 'willing suspension of disbelief' has to be suspended so high, and so frequently, that it is almost out of sight. But criticisms circling around the questionable realism of the film are missing the point. Woo comes from a film-making tradition where 'common sense' and 'logic' (particularly in action/fantasy pictures) are not considered by viewers as important as they are to audiences here. Stunts and plot lines regularly defy what would be our natural expectations and logic, grounded as we are in the different Western, realist tradition. In his film Woo uses the distancing, and peculiar advantage, that this cultural difference brings, creating an ironic comment on the action film, as well as indulging his own thematic obsessions. The 'face/off' procedure is simply a plot device, a MacGuffin (to borrow Hitchcock's term for a red herring) allowing Woo's exploration of these concerns. In this light, it's not important that the operation is plainly absurd, or that Cage and Travolta are obviously different body shapes. What matters is the play that this change thereafter allows the director on identity, moral values, audience expectation, acting styles - and all the rest. As if the underline this, Woo has the actors make a unique, artificial 'face off' movement (down the face with their hands) when the magic words are spoken on screen, a visible mantra to the whole procedure. The implausibility is thereby *emphasised*, not hidden, a dramatic device made into a flourish, not a liability. Woo in short doesn't care about plausibility, because his true concerns lay elsewhere. But the sniffing at Woo's substantial achievement continues. Yet no one criticises Franju's 'Les Yeux Sans Visage' - which is equally ridiculous in its central conceit - even though there we are supposed to take the operation seriously. Perhaps because this type of event is 'allowed' without raised eyebrows, in our regular horror tradition we wave it through. In Frankenheimer's 'Seconds', to take another example, Rock Hudson is miraculously (and to my mind absurdly) created out of a body of a shorter, middle aged man. 'Seconds' is a (good) film without a post-modern idea in its head - yet has won plaudits because of the wider social issues it addresses away from the unconvincing new identity-creation. 'Face/Off', in short, requires a more sophisticated response from some critics and action fans than it has so far received. A comparison with some of the less complex and more mindless action pictures that appeared at the same time (the overrated 'The Rock' for instance) reveals considerable strengths and virtues. Whereas other action films come and go, 'Face/Off' remains obstinately in the mind, teasing the genre, inviting repeated viewings.
John Woo's best work in Hollywood August 17, 2009
Francisco Pizarro (Puerto Rico)
Sometimes, being a legend in something doesn't guarantee success. That certainly is the case of John Woo, a legendary director in Asia, who has made some really influential action films like Hard Boiled and Ichi the Killer. Many of his films are strong influences on today's crop of action directors and actors. When news came out that he was heading to Hollywood, everyone got excited. But in the end, Face/Off is the only one of the films he made in the U.S. that really made an impact. Which is a weird thing, since this film is without a doubt, the most far-fetched project Woo did in the U.S. and probably in his whole career.
The film's plot tells it all: FBI agent Sean Archer(Travolta) finally captures his long time nemesis, Castor Troy(Cage), the man who killed his son; but learns he has left a parting gift in the form of a bomb somewhere in LA. In order to stop him, Archer takes the face of Troy (who is in a comma)and "becomes" Troy in order to get the information he needs to stop the bomb. While he is doing that. Castor wakes up(sans face) and forces the surgeons who turned Archer into Troy to turn him into Archer and then destroys all evidence of it happening. The main characters have in fact, switched places. Troy now living with Archer's wife and daughter and Archer hiding within Troy's underworld contacts. Plenty of action ensues. Confused? I understand.
As far out and impossible as all this sounds, Woo makes it work. For length of the film you have no problem believing it is possible to turn someone like John Travolta into someone like Nic Cage. The reason for this is that both actors give themselves completely to their roles. Travolta truly shines, first establishing the tortured Archer, then having a blast copying the over the top intensity that Cage infused into the character of Castor Troy. Same thing with Cage. Though we only see him in the beggining as Troy, but it is more than enough for Cage to bring him to life. In 15 minutes, he projects every ounce of decadence and arrogance of the character. Which makes it the more fun when Travolta takes over and vice-versa. It is this interaction that makes this film successful despite the moon crater-like holes in this story. After all, the whole reason the whole convulted plot was concieved, was to explore the duality of good and evil within each of us. Incredibly, it succeeds.
Of course, this being a Woo film, there is plenty of action and gun-play. All of the trademarked Woo-isms are here: plenty of gun to gun stand-offs, churches, white doves and enough slow-motion to satisfy the hardcore Woo fans. Woo makes action look like a flowing dance and this film is no exception. The brutality and chaos of some scenes offset by slow-mo shots that makes everything flow. The beggining and end sequences are particuarly noteworthy.
The tranfer to High Def is pretty decent. It lacks the sharpness and detail of recent films but a lot of that has to do woth the age of the film. On the other hand, many older films have had better transfers than this one so it is probably a combination of age and a not-so-awsome job on the transfer. Having said that, this is quite simply, the best this film has looked on Home Video. Certainly superior to every DVD release of this film.
Face/Off is a great and entertaining film despite its flaws. The fact that you are able to really enjoy it even with the out-of-this world premise, is a testament to Woo, Cage, Travolta and the entire cast of this film. An awsome action film that looks great on Blu-Ray.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 362
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