There are certain films that not only change the landscape of films but the way we see film. The Jazz Singer popularized the idea of “talkies” in the 1920s. Jaws brought about the idea of the summer blockbuster. Toy Story introduced the first completely CGI movie. Oh yeah, and there was that time a bunch of French people lost their shit at a train coming directly at the screen. But in 1997, we saw another one of these landmarks. I’m not talking about Titanic, with its remarkable use of special and practical effects, and its massive success that became the end of a certain type of blockbuster filmmaking. No, I’m talking about Face/Off, a movie where John Travolta and Nicolas Cage literally swap faces.

For twenty-five years, I had heard of Face/Off’s absurdity, almost believing it couldn’t exist. Surely, no one could write something this insane. Simply describing what this movie is about could understandably lead friends and family to stage an intervention. But I’ll be damned, Face/Off is real, and it’s spectacular.

For the uninitiated—which I unfortunately was until a few weeks ago—Face/Off is about a face-off between two men, both figuratively and about as literally as one can be. Travolta plays FBI Special Agent Sean Archer, who survives a murder attempt by the maniacal Castor Troy (Cage). However, this failed assassination murders Archer’s young son in the process. Years later, Archer has made it his mission to hunt down Troy, and after tracking him down to an airstrip, Troy is knocked into a coma. Troy’s brother Pollux (Alessandro Nivola) is taken into custody and admits that Castor has hidden a bomb in Los Angeles, but with Pollux not talking and Castor in a coma, drastic measures need to be taken to find this ticking time bomb.

nicolas cage & john travolta - face off

RELATED: The Power of '90s Nostalgia and Big Budget Baddies, From 'Face/Off' to 'Under Siege'

OK, so here’s where things get really interesting. To find out where the bomb is, Archer is offered an experimental surgery where he will take on the face, appearance, and voice of Troy. The procedure is explained as if they’re offering to take off a mole. This horrific procedure seems to be no big deal, and relatively quickly, Archer agrees to take on the demeanor of his mortal enemy. In order to do this, the actual face of Troy has to be taken off and grafted onto Archer, while Archer’s face is put on ice for later. You’re probably thinking, “taking off a person’s face is going to be gross,” and you would be absolutely right. The sickening “thwuck” sound of a face popping off the human skull will haunt me for all my days. Even wilder is how easily it apparently is to alter John Travolta’s body to look like Nicolas Cage, and yet, this procedure is reversible? Archer has a scar where Troy’s bullet went through his body and hit his son, and while he has to get this scar removed for this whole situation to work, he wants the scar back after the mission, and again, that’s just no big deal to this team. This secret procedure is simply remarkable.

But to me, taking the face off isn’t the most fucked part. While Archer-as-Troy is going undercover to get information from Pollux, Troy-in-a-coma is just sitting there with absolutely no face. When Troy wakes up, rightfully pissed off, he looks like a Mortal Kombat character post-fatality, and demands that the doctors give him Archer’s face. Honestly, not an unreasonable request when you look like Mortal Kombat 4’s Meat come to life. With the faces now fully swapped, it’s time to have some fun, as Archer attempts to go undercover as Troy, while Troy now looks like a notable special agent with a wife (Joan Allen) and rebellious daughter (Dominique Swain) who have no idea that their father and husband has undergone this surgery.

As one would expect with this cast, much of Face/Off’s fun comes down to Cage doing a Travolta impression, while Travolta does a Cage impression. This leads to two incredibly enjoyable performances at the center of this wild concept. Face/Off’s writers Mike Werb and Michael Colleary show us before the swap how over-the-top Troy can be, most notably in a scene where he randomly joins a choir while trying to escape one scene, while also seducing one of the choir members. We’ve seen Cage cranked up to 11, but Face/Off seems almost too much, even for him. On the other end, Archer is still ruled by his grief, a pain that permeates his work and personal life. These drastically different performances allow for Cage and Travolta both at their most restrained and their most ridiculous.

face-off-john-travolta
Image via Paramount Pictures

For all its insanity, is almost like a fascinating acting experiment for both Cage and Travolta that is immensely satisfying. Face/Off comes after several roles where Cage is doing a lot with his performances, from the intentionally hammy action roles in The Rock and Con Air, to his more subdued, yet still large work that earned him an Oscar two years earlier in Leaving Las Vegas. But here, Cage very much embodies the internal struggle going on within Archer, as he watches Troy systematically attempt to destroy his life. He’s helpless against the man who has already taken so much from him, and Cage never tries to overplay this emotion once the faces have been swapped.

But it’s Travolta who really gets to have a ball here, as we see him doing his full-on Cage performance. It’s especially fun to watch Travolta doing a gargantuan Cage impression right to Cage’s face, especially as he has to play the quieter of the two roles. Once Troy takes on Archer, it’s like he’s trying to make Archer’s world burn, whether through arguably being a better special agent than the real Archer, to giving Archer’s daughter advice, and constantly hinting at a possible sexual angle. When Troy was played by Cage, we saw how unhinged he could be, and Travolta continues to play in this pumped-up wheelhouse. Beyond all the film’s craziness, there are two kinds of great performances at the center that really make this more than just an absurd concept brought to life.

Werb and Colleary’s script is also a perfect playground for John Woo’s fittingly bonkers style of action directing, where bullets flow like rain, and doves are omnipresent in literally every situation. While I am by no means a Woo expert, I’ve felt like the films I have seen from him have always tonally missed the mark for me. While people love his Hong Kong action films like The Killer and Hard Boiled, I’ve always felt the combination of cheesy jokes and mostly-serious action never gelled in a way that I found effective, and his Mission: Impossible II is still my least favorite in the series, no matter how many tries I give it.

Travolta and Cage in Face/Off

But with Face/Off, Woo has finally woo’ed me. Here, I feel the self-awareness in this lunacy. It’s impossible to make a film where two of the 90s biggest actors literally swap faces without realizing how nuts this whole experiment is. Woo’s approach is tonally similar to what he’s done in the past, yet Werb and Colleary’s script embraces the inherent goofiness of Woo’s action films in a way that blends quite well. While some 90s action films might have the occasionally added tinge of silliness, Face/Off seems to know exactly what it is and dives in headfirst.

It’s easy to watch many of the action films of the 90s and laugh at their unintentional humor, moments that seem off, or just haven’t aged well decades later. But with Face/Off, its the rare big-budget 90s action film that seems to be laughing with the audience, knowing how this story will be seen by an audience. That awareness has made Face/Off age incredibly well, maybe even more than the film’s peers.

I never really grew up watching these 90s action films, as my parents had a strict no R-rated film policy, to the point that I was almost afraid to see R-rated films once I was allowed. My parents had built up the dangers of R-rated films so much that when they finally let me see Air Force One in 1997, I literally thought it was essentially going to be a snuff film where Harrison Ford is straight-up murdering people. I say this because I don’t have the nostalgia most people have for these 90s action films, and while most of these films have been built up by people who grew up with them, I usually find them underwhelming. But not Face/Off. On the contrary, Face/Off has lived up to the hype, an almost unbelievable barrage of wild concepts and truly impressive performances that culminates in one of the best action films of the 1990s.

Rating: B+