# FACE/OFF - SPECIAL COLLECTOR'S EDITION (Blu-ray; Paramount)



## Osage_Winter (Apr 8, 2010)

*Studio: Paramount
MPAA Rating: R 
Disc/Transfer Information: High Definition 1080p; Aspect Ratio: 2.34:1; Original Aspect Ratio 2.39:1; Region A (U.S.) Release Tested 
Video Codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Tested Audio Track: English DTS 5.1 ES Matrix
Director: John Woo
Starring Cast: John Travolta, Nicolas Cage, Joan Allen, Gina Gershon 


IN ORDER TO TRAP HIM…HE MUST BECOME HIM.


PLOT ANALYSIS:*

To be perfectly honest, the tagline of this John Woo 1997 action potboiler which made famous lines such as _“If I were to let you…suck my tongue…would you be grateful?”_ and _“No more drugs for that man…”_ isn’t really accurate – the lead role by John Travolta’s Sean Archer FBI agent character isn’t really trying to trap Nicolas Cage’s out-of-his-mind psycho terrorist Castor Troy character per se…he’s actually trying to infiltrate the prison that Troy’s equally demented yet slow-as-molasses (mentally) brother is being housed in so the FBI can learn the location of a bomb slated to blow up all of Los Angeles and…

Oh, I digress. Let’s not split hairs this early on.

If you haven’t seen John Woo’s addictive _Face/Off_, you’re probably living under a rock with Michael Bay’s half-cousin waiting for the end of the world to arrive – actually, speaking of Michael Bay, I can’t help but think, every time I watch _Face/Off_, that this feels so much like a Bay production, what with the constant slow-mo’s of characters jumping out of planes, dual guns blazing and the over-the-top action sequences…yet, it’s a Woo film, a la _Broken Arrow_ (which wasn’t nearly as good as this) and it has become somewhat of a tongue-in-cheek cult classic amongst an army of fans. Admittingly, I did not get around to picking this title up on either DVD or Blu-ray until now, and for that, I pledge my sincere apologies to the high def and film loving community…however, now that I have it in my collection, I have watched it twice already, and still the most head-scratching element I constantly ponder is regarding Paramount’s decision to equip _Face/Off_ with a choice of two lossy audio tracks – no high-resolution offerings here. While absolutely no slouch, the DTS ES mix (I didn’t sample the Dolby track) may have been so much more effective if swapped for a high-resolution preparation and remaster…but again, that’s probably splitting hairs. I’ll get to the audio in a separate area.

Woo’s _Face/Off_ is like an evil version of the Jason Bateman/Ryan Reynolds comedy _The Change Up_, in which those two nincompoops somehow switch personalities within their respective bodies just by simultaneously urinating in some fountain – in _Face/Off_, John Travolta’s Sean Archer character willingly and physically changes identities with his archnemesis Castor Troy (Cage) through a special surgical procedure only the Feds know about, encompassing literal removal of one person’s face to swap it on another’s. Never mind the scientific and biological complications this would involve in real life – we have to go with the subplot that suggests healing now takes “days instead of weeks” and special pain killers can make all the difference. How do we get to this point of the plot? Well, Travolta’s character lost his son to the lunatic terrorist-for-hire Castor Troy which we witness during the film’s opening flashback sequence, and apparently Troy wasn’t aiming for the kid – only his enemy, FBI agent Sean Archer, at an amusement park where Troy tracked him and his son down to. Both of them are struck by Troy’s scope-guided rifle and associated hardware, as Troy looks on from a distance surveying the gunshot he has inflicted to Archer’s back and his son’s body. The kid dies, and as the action fast-forwards to the present day, we can tell Archer is all about catching this scum bag and maybe killing him for good. Meanwhile, Cage plays the psychotic Castor Troy way over-the-top, going from grabbing the rear ends of Christian chorus girls singing at the convention center where he has just planted his brother’s mega-bomb while doing a sick, perverted dance dressed as a clergyman (I’m not kidding) to getting on a private jet where he suggests to the FBI undercover agent posing as a stewardess to “suck his tongue” – and she does! You can tell Cage had fun with this role, even though it’s widely known that he originally wasn’t interested in playing a bad guy. Eventually, Troy is hunted down and closed in by Archer and the FBI, and after an action setpiece shootout, Troy is apprehended after being knocked out cold by being sucked into a turbine tube of some kind near the airfield the scene takes place at.

With Troy in a coma resting at the Walsh Institute (the clinic responsible for the “miracle body surgeries”) – no guards around him if you can believe that – the FBI discovers that Troy’s equally psychotic baby brother has built a super bomb ready to level L.A. Authorities above Archer suggest the only way to know where that bomb is located is to have Archer go under a special surgical procedure which physically and literally swaps Troy’s face for his, so his body would be his own but his face would look like Troy’s and his voice would sound like him too…in order to infiltrate the prison the brother is in and learn the location of the bomb. Archer agrees, and from that point, things in _Face/Off_ go from nuts to nuttier.

Apparently, Troy’s demented brother has been placed in a prison that keeps the population under control by the use of magnetic boots, restricting the prisoners from moving too much, if at all; once there, Archer, looking like Troy, makes the brother suspicious due to his erratic behavior and inability, at first, to defend himself against prisoners that attack him, like the one who accuses him of having a “sandwich” with female members of his family. Eventually, of course, Troy comes out of his coma and discovers, horribly, what has happened to his face, and he forces Dr. Walsh of the institute to give him Archer’s face, which is still floating in a special solution for preservation – and boy, does Troy have some fun as FBI agent Sean Archer. The real kickers come when the two of them meet face-to-face in, for example, the prison, where Troy, looking like Travolta, informs Archer, looking like Cage, that he has killed everyone who can explain who he really is (by burning them alive in the clinic with gasoline) and that now he’s about to have a good time with Archer’s wife. To watch Cage and Travolta switch personalities and try and play their opposite characters here – something they heavily practiced and worked on during production – is one of the more entertaining elements of the film, especially when Cage’s Troy character, looking like Travolta, gets to know Archer’s wife and somewhat pretty teenage daughter. 

Sean Archer, looking like the lunatic criminal Castor Troy, must find a way to break out of this prison, isolated in the middle of the ocean on what appears to be an oil rig, make it back to society in order to warn everyone that the man posing as Sean Archer is really Castor Troy, while attempting to get word out of the location of Troy’s brother’s bomb and attempting to get his hands, finally, around the throat of his diehard enemy. If that isn’t enough, he must do this _and_ get his real face back in a reverse procedure of the original surgery. You know Castor Troy, the demented psycho that he is, isn’t going to make it easy for Archer, right? Especially when it comes to that last part…

_Face/Off_ also features the always-gorgeous Gina Gershon (remember her as William Forsythe’s sister in the Steven Seagal classic _Out For Justice_?) as Troy’s girlfriend and sister of one of Troy’s gang’s top men; the plot has a lot of blackmailing done to her character by Travolta’s Archer FBI agent character through her little boy she had with Troy, who Archer uses as a pawn to threaten taking him away from her if she doesn’t assist with capturing Castor. 

While a bit long in the running time, _Face/Off_ remains great fun and I’m glad it’s in my collection, even if it probably won’t see much repeat viewing time. 


*VIDEO QUALITY ANALYSIS:*

Rumors all over internet home theater boards and forums indicate the U.S. release of _Face/Off_, in this Paramount “Special Collector’s Edition,” was riddled with tons of noise reduction (DNR), rendering the final image waxy and flat – while I went into the viewing knowing this, the transfer did look tremendously clean and grain/grit-free, indicating to me some kind of noise reduction algorithm was used during mastering. Still, I prefer my transfers clean, so I enjoyed the video quality of _Face/Off_ on Blu-ray disc…from the very beginning, the image is ripe with detail, the outdoor sequences bursting with color and clean imagery beyond what a DVD can muster. The facial close-ups are indeed a bit on the “waxy” side, but I still noted detail; I mean, it’s not like so much DNR was used the transfer looked like a dripping, liquid mess...

Other rumors and reviews on this release suggested many parts of the transfer were “noisy” and riddled with other video issues – I did not detect much video noise of any kind, save for some very minor instances in dark, out-of-focus scenes. To me, the whole visual scape here was clean and effective, if just a bit on that “flat, waxy” side due to perhaps DNR manipulation. But _Face/Off_ definitely wasn’t disappointing on Blu. 

*AUDIO QUALITY ANALYSIS:*

Again, the decision by Paramount to include lossy audio tracks on this release is baffling, given the action genre – sure, studios like Warner Bros. have given titles like _Michael Clayton_ lossy Dolby Digital mixes, but a title like that really wouldn’t benefit much from a lossless track , at least not like _Face/Off_ would. Selecting the DTS mix, I immediately discovered that _Face/Off_ makes up for the lack of a high-resolution mix with this loud, overtly aggressive track that hits you over the head and just gets stronger and stronger as the film progresses. While my setup doesn’t allow for 6.1 or 7.1, the 5.1 arrangement in my room let me take in this action flick and its hyper audio mix for all it was worth, throwing spatial cues, directional information, Foley effects and more into all the channels and letting supplemental cues such as bullet shots effectively find their way behind the soundstage in the surround channels. If there was only one thing to nit-pick over it was the fact that this mix sounded a bit “of its vintage” – in other words, you can easily tell, from the quality of the audio, that this is a film from the mid-‘90s.

But if you like it loud – this delivers in spades, if not quite reference material.


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## robbo266317 (Sep 22, 2008)

I agree it was worth watching... once.
I would not bother renting or buying on blu-ray. Hey, that's just me. I can think of a lot of other movies I would purchase first.lddude:

However if it appeals to you, then go for it.


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## Osage_Winter (Apr 8, 2010)

robbo266317 said:


> I agree it was worth watching... once.
> I would not bother renting or buying on blu-ray. Hey, that's just me. I can think of a lot of other movies I would purchase first.lddude:
> 
> However if it appeals to you, then go for it.


Hey, robbo.

Thanks for the reply; this was by no means a "must have it" title, but it was on my "mental want list" for some time and I decided to pick it up because it was dirt cheap on Amazon. If one can get it under $10, as I did, it's worth the purchase, I suppose. It's not an outstanding film by any means; just popcorn entertainment if you like it loud and dumb. 

As a back catalog, older title, I was surprised I was even going to get a reply to this review. Thanks again for at least taking the time to do so. :T


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## JBrax (Oct 13, 2011)

Thanks for the review Osage. I personally enjoyed this movie back in the day and plan on adding it to the collection. There's absolutely nothing wrong with the loud and dumb genre. Sometimes it's relaxing to just sit back and enjoy the mindless carnage.


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## Osage_Winter (Apr 8, 2010)

Thank you, Brax! And I agree with you 100 percent about the "loud and dumb" genre...:T :T


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## robbo266317 (Sep 22, 2008)

Osage_Winter said:


> Hey, robbo.
> 
> Thanks for the reply; this was by no means a "must have it" title, but it was on my "mental want list" for some time and I decided to pick it up because it was dirt cheap on Amazon. If one can get it under $10, as I did, it's worth the purchase, I suppose. It's not an outstanding film by any means; just popcorn entertainment if you like it loud and dumb.
> 
> As a back catalog, older title, I was surprised I was even going to get a reply to this review. Thanks again for at least taking the time to do so. :T


Everyone's tastes are different, otherwise it would be a pretty boring world. :blink:
I appreciate the review and I am sure there are people who may like it for reasons other than just loud and dumb. 
Cheers,
Bill.


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## jdent02 (Jan 13, 2012)

The action scenes might have an overabundance of slow mo, but there's a certain elegance to it, and you can almost always follow what happening. Thats two things I can rarely say about a Michael Bay action scene....


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