“Face/Off”
1997 • R • 2hs 18mins • Watch trailer • Rent it • Stream on Prime Video
👋🪨 The Hand that Rocks the Cagel: Three Nic Cage action movies in a row
You’re reading Pizza & a Movie—rewinding the stories of rental classics. This week we’re wrapping up a Triple Header: The Hand that Rocks the Cagel. It’s the action-packed trilogy that defined Cage’s turn from dramatic actor to guy with a gun and a job to do. Tonight it’s a Cage full of rage versus high-voltage Travoltage in Face/Off.
Here’s the plot. Terrorist Castor Troy (Nicolas Cage) tries to kill his FBI nemesis Sean Archer (John Travolta), but eighty-sixes Archer’s son instead. Six years later, Archer’s quiet quitting his family to capture Troy. Not sure what the fuss is, just use a wooden horse—it’s been done before. Anyway, Troy’s back in town with kid brother Pollux (Alessandro Nivola, who I get confused with Damian Lewis) to install a bomb. I think they’re in LA, but it’s not important. When Archer catches up to Troy, the latter’s knocked clear into a coma before he can divulge any bomb deets. Archer, reluctantly, lets mad scientist Dr. Walsh (Colm Feore) replace his face with Troy’s like they’re swapping Trapper Keepers. This is only like the third most unbelievable thing that happens over the running time.
🥸 = Face-Swapped Mode™
🥸Archer gets himself put in the same prison that as Pollux, who still looks like a villainous John Lennon, to coax bomb-related intel out of the brother. But while he’s busy, a faceless Troy un-comas and steals Archer’s face, which is lying around like a leftover slice of pizza in the fridge, and kills anyone who knew about the swap. 🥸Troy takes up Archer’s life as an office boi, rekindles his marriage with wife Eve (Joan Allen), and becomes Cool Dad to daughter Jamie (Dominique Swain). Honestly, he’s killing it. Now, can 🥸Archer prove his true identity in time to stop 🥸Troy ruining his life? Will 🥸Troy go legit, leaving a life of crime behind now that he has the perfect disguise? And will somebody, anybody, please explain what the title means?
This completes what I can’t believe no one’s calling Nic Cage’s Prison Trilogy. For the third movie in a row, he has to escape incarceration. But he was a prolific behind-bars player. To prove a point, here’s a list of all the movies where Cage is in jail (tell me if I missed one):
Movies Where Nicolas Cage Is in Jail
Raising Arizona (1987)
Wild at Heart (1990)
Honeymoon in Vegas (1992)
Amos & Andrew (1993)
Kiss of Death (1995)
The Rock (1996)
Con Air (1997)
Face/Off (1997)
Lord of War (2005)
Next (2007)
Drive Angry (2011) (Hell counts as jail, right?)
Seeking Justice (2011)
Stolen (2012)
Joe (2013)
Dog Eat Dog (2016)
A Score to Settle (2019)
Prisoners of the Ghostland (2021)
I’m no expert, but that’s a lotta Cage in the cage. You hate to see it, but he does it so well. This time, Cage has to escape not just a prison inexplicably floating out at sea, but a prison of flesh as well.
So how’d we get this ‘90s masterpiece? They made Face/Off out of three ingredients: Reputations, sci-fi, and samurai. Let’s unpack.
Face/Off started as a project built around Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger. The idea was to use what movie-goers knew about the actors’ public personas to create tension within the movie. When he couldn’t bag the big guys, director John Woo hired Cage and Travolta. Travolta was in a waning second career kicked off by Pulp Fiction (’94). Cage was ascendent, this being his third action picture in a year after The Rock and Con Air. Their respective characters reflect all of this at first. But before long they’re reminding us that Travolta can go really big and Cage can seem responsible. Legend has it that Travolta didn’t know Cage was going to play Troy so manic until filming. But once Travolta saw Cage’s take, he said okay, I guess that’s what we’re doing. And he matched it.
Our second ingredient is sci-fi. In Mike Werb’s and Michael Colleary’s spec script, these events take place in the future. Woo didn’t sign on until it was rewritten to a present-day setting. But it’s all still there. Maybe I’m forgetting something, but I don’t remember the ‘90s having face-swapping technology. Absent too were high-tech oil drilling platform-like prisons with electromagnetic floors. Face/Off remained a low-key sci-fi flick. The premise doesn’t work otherwise.
Last in the mix: Duty of the samurai. ‘80s and ‘90s action stars come from cowboys, which come from samurai. Rambo, John McClane and Sean Archer are all fundamentally loners. Like cowboys, something inside them (narcissism?) makes them clean up whatever town they ride into. Actual cowboys were, of course, blue collar workers primarily responsible for, uh, cows more than local outlaws. We owe our heroic ideal of the drifter cowboy with a code a la The Magnificent Seven (‘60) to the movie it’s a remake of—Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai (‘54). Why can’t Archer leave things be and build a life with the family he still has? He’s a samurai.
Did folks in ’97 like this? No. Everyone loved it. Critics praised everything from Woo’s stylized violence to the level of emoting our leads put out to the meta movie-within-a-movie. Sure, we’re watching Travolta and Cage act like characters. But we’re really watching Travolta make fun of Cage and Cage make fun of Travolta. This was hailed as the script-writing wizardry of the decade. You got to remember, this was the ‘90s—era of Pulp Fiction. Trick scripts were in. Peter Travers for Rolling Stone said, “with Travolta and Cage taking comic and psychic measures of their characters and their own careers, there is no resisting Face/Off. This you gotta see.” To this day, it holds a 92% on Rotten Tomatoes and is usually cited as Woo’s best movie.
It was a financial success too, raking in $245M against an $80M budget. Con Air didn’t so as well, but that could be because Face/Off was actually in competition with it at the box office. Two bonkers Nicolas Cage action movies in theaters within three weeks! Paste calls June of 1997 “the month that Cage was king,” pointing out that he’d also won an Oscar the year before for his heartbreaking turn in Leaving Las Vegas (‘95). What a time to be alive.
I can’t speak for movie-goers back then, but teen yours truly, who saw this on cable a few years later, thought it was bananas. Not all in a bad way, but not all good. Rewatching it last week, it’s even more zany than I’d remembered. What struck me was that action sure has changed. Woo’s chaotic, kinetic approach contrasted nicely at the time with muscle-bound punch-outs of the Stallone/Schwarzenegger prior era. But now, with Woo’s stylized action perfected in the likes of Marvel franchises, the pendulum has swung back. John Wick’s naturalism is the fresh breeze now. It makes Face/Off look mighty silly.
After Face/Off, Cage’s pivotal trilogy was complete, accomplishing two big things. Thing one: Our man was a real-deal action star now. His name could open a movie. And two, “Cage” meant “dangerous”. After this, he’d make Snake Eyes (’98) and 8mm (’99), both of which are full of yucky people doing yucky things. 8mm is particularly unpleasant. Eventually he’d find his mid-career commercial niche in National Treasure (’04). He was a name we knew, his gravitas implied expertise, and his flamboyance was always fun to watch. Like Luke Buckmaster once said in The Guardian, “[Cage] has the presence of a leading man, and the eccentricities of a character actor.” He’s always been two-in-one.
Nowadays there’s whispers of Face/Off 2. Well, not whispers. Cage seems to be telling anyone who will listen. Not sure if it’s a good idea, but I am sure I’ll watch it if they make it. Speaking of sequels, pour one out for Spider-Man Noir. Across the Spider-Verse opens in a few weeks, but Cage isn’t in this one.
That’s Face/Off, and the end of our Triple Header, The Hand That Rocks the Cagel. I really enjoyed this one, hope you did too. Thanks for reading!
And hey, if this one melted your face off, share it with someone else who WAIT A SECOND! I JUST GOT IT! Cage’s character’s last name is “TROY”, like the city of Troy, which fell for the Trojan Horse trick. Face/Off is about infiltration by looking like something—someone—you’re not! And Travolta’s last name is “ARCHER”, like how Prince Paris of Troy was a renowned archer. It all makes sense! Five stars! PERFECT MOVIE!
NOTES:
In real life, Travolta is a decade Cage’s senior. Don’t mean it in a mean way, but you can tell.
Travolta will not stop petting people’s faces in this. This is not a thing people do, and it’s so unnerving.
They say Face/Off inspired the Hong Kong action flick Infernal Affairs. Infernal Affairs was later remade for American audiences as Scorsese’s The Departed, which won Best Picture as the snake ate its tail.
Cage has been married five times, notably to Elvis’s daughter, Lisa Marie Presley. That was number two.
Cage has an honorary doctorate, an Oscar, a Golden Globe, a SAG award and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Alessandro Nivola is excellent in The Art of Self-Defense (2019), one of my favorite movies that no one’s seen.
Margaret Cho is great in Fire Island (2022) as everyone’s mom.
Castor and Pollux were twins in Greek mythology. The god Zeus turned them into the constellation Gemini, which is Latin for “twins”.
I can’t think of a movie with such an extended “we’re saying the title!” sequence.